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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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Copyright No. 
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



Protestant Miracles. 



HIGH ORTHODOX AND EVANGELICAL AUTHORITY FOR 

THE BELIEF IN DIVINE INTERPOSITION 

IN HUMAN AFFAIRS. 



SOME ACCOUNT OF MARVELOUS CURES OF ILLNESS, 

RESCUE FROM DANGER, DEATH, POVERTY AND 

SUFFERING, THROUGH FAITH AND PRAYER, 

IN RECENT CENTURIES. 



Compiled from the Writings of Men Eminent in Protestant Churches. 



By F. J. Ryan. 



Stockton. Cal. 

Record Publishing Co., Printers. 

1899. 



38901 

COPYRIGHT 

1899 

BY F. J. RYAN. 



.A 







TJ 






PREFACE. 



This work was begun with very little thought that it would 
ever become a book. Its origin is this: I had been reading 
and hearing lectures on Christian Science, on metaphysical 
healing; mental science, etc., for some months, when there 
seemed to be almost a general onslaught on the first named 
system of religion and therapeutics, by orthodox clergymen, 
newspaper writers, coroners and other public officers, even to 
legislators. The animosity appeared to reach its climax in my 
home city just about the time the Scientist congregation an- 
nounced as the subject of its Wednesday evening meeting, "Is 
Christian Science a Delusion?" 

In examining the affirmative side of the proposition I found 
the basis thereof to be a Protestant dogma to the effect that 
the age of miracles had passed away with the immediate suc- 
cessors to the apostles. I also found that the men who held 
to this dogma prayed with apparent fervor for especial bless- 
ings upon their favorite charities, Sabbath schools, enterprises, 
and about the time the onslaught was made, that orthodox 
Protestant clergymen were lobbying for appointment as chap- 
lains to several legislative bodies where they must pray for the 
rare miracles of the investment of those bodies with wisdom. 

I remembered well the stories told by revivalists in my 
youth— I hadn't heard any revival sermons for a generation — 
of how they were aided in their work by miraculous means. 



I remembered also that some clergymen had regarded the as- 
sassins, Booth and Guiteau, as instruments of Providence. It 
didn't matter that these were ministers of the gospel of hatred 
when their sectional prejudices were stirred. I never heard of 
any of them being disciplined for what Northern clergymen 
of the same churches usually regarded as blasphemy. With 
these matters in mind I set about investigating the truth or 
falsity of the plea that Protestants agreed on the proposition 
that the age of miracles had passed away with the second cen- 
tury of our era. I was astounded at the result of my first 
week's search by finding that many of the most responsible, 
scholarly, eminent and effective laborers in the Protestant 
field of Christianity, in every century, and perhaps in every 
year since the Reformation, including Luther, have not only 
believed in but put themselves on record as believing in mira- 
culous healing of the sick; of the rescue of the righteous from 
death by storm, by flood, by fire, by accident, by crime, by 
freezing and other means, in answer to prayer. I have also 
found cases in which clergymen have endorsed, as true, stories 
of the vindication of just persons from grave accusations of 
crime and other miraculous occurrences; of special provi- 
dences and divine interpositions in human affairs for the pro- 
motion of religion and justice. 

In pursuing my researches for material I have examined 
several hundred volumes by authors of acknowledged ability, 
learning and authority. While I have found something of 
value in nearly every work, many of them contain matter that 
is in substance repetitions of some other authors. Some are 
amusing for the simplicity they seem to ascribe to their 
readers. This class, though it includes some of the most 



learned and famous, seems to suppose the reader will not or 
cannot detect discrepancies of statement or inconsistences of 
argument, when the inconsistent or incompatible statements or 
arguments are widely separated. 

Some are intrinsically and apparently intentionally amus- 
ing. Of this class is Scientific Sophisms," by Samuel Wain- 
wright, D. D. While it does not defend miracles it ridicules 
that class of scientists who seem to require readers to reject 
the supernatural for the hyper-natural, who spin metaphysical 
theories as intangible and unintelligible and that convey as 
little information on the subject to the average mind as do 
the clouds that chase each other or tumble and roll over each 
other during a summer storm. These theorists seem to expect 
their reader to play Polinius to their Hamlet and declare that 
they see in those nebulous theories whales, camels or weasels, 
as the theorist may suggest, without detecting the inconsist- 
ency or absurdity of the theories or assumptions. 

In reading the various hypotheses advanced by material- 
ists — philosophers real and presumptive — to explain away 
miracles, the conclusion is often forced on the reader that it 
requires more credulity to accept the theory than to accept the 
miracle. They seem to imagine that in calling marvelous 
occurrences "phenomena" they have disposed of the question. 
It never seems to occur to them that their writings will be read 
by those who can distinguish between matters of terminology 
and matters of logic, or that any will perceive that to call a 
miracle a phenomenon does not take it out of the realm of the 
miraculous. 

It may strike some of those who read this work that the 
authorities I quote in support of the opinion that the age of 



miracles has not passed away, do not agree well. That must 
be granted, but the disagreement is principally as to what are 
miracles. However inconsistent the arguments of one may be 
with those advanced by others, the inconsistency is no concern 
of mine. The main fact remains that most of those from whom 
I quote deserve to rank as leaders of Protestant thought and 
others are, at least, non-Catholic, so that in quoting them I am 
consistent with the purpose I had in view in undertaking to 
show that Protestants, under which classification I include all 
who are neither Catholics, Jews, Atheists, Spiritualists, Swe- 
denborgians nor anti-Christians, are by no means unanimous 
in the belief that no real miracles have been wrought since 
the death of the immediate successors of the apostles. 

Some may want to know who is the author of this little 
volume. He is a very obscure person and his personality is 
not involved. If the reader doubts anything stated herein as 
fact, he doubts not the author but the authority to whom he 
refers or whom he quotes. He has sought to verify his state- 
ments and, as far as possible, has confined himself to works 
that may be found in almost all public libraries in cities of 
say half a century's growth. The author is old in newspaper 
work, but this department of literary work is new to him and 
critics will probably see in it the evidence of journalistic 
journey-work and lack of literary finish — the ornamentals of 
book-architecture. These were not the object of the work and 
I have made fact the first object and argument the second. If 
the few arguments are good and well based they need neither 
a celebrated name nor the gilding, molding, carving or fillagree 
work of the word-artist to support them. On its merits this 
little book is respectfully submitted. F. J. R. 



PROTESTANT DISBELIEF. 



IT OVERSHOT ITS MARK AND CAUSED ITS AUTHORS 

TROUBLE. 

When it is asserted, as it often, is, that the age of miracles 
has long been passed, it becomes a matter of interest to know 
when, the age ended. The time usually given, by those who 
regard themselves as orthodox Christians, is the end of the 
second century. They rarely go into particulars as to the ex- 
act year or even the decade, but the impression gained is that 
miracles went out about the time that Constantine made 
Christianity fashionable. 

Constantine embraced Christianity A. D. 313 and his con- 
version was one of the last miracles that are now generally 
recognized as genuine by orthodox Protestants. Catholics 
believe that miracles are still wrought by men of exceptionally 
pure and Christ-like lives. Even Father DeSmet, in his letters 
from the missions, in what Was then Oregon territory, tells of 
some phenomena that were miraculous and, if my memory is 
not at fault, among them were the exorcising of evil spirits. 
I cannot now find the letters to which I refer, but my recol- 
lection is that these stories were published in a Catholic weekly 
paper in St. Louis during about the years 1844 to 1848. It will 
not do to quote Catholic authority, however, as Protestants 



g PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

generally discredit their accounts. Even the authors of the 
Bampton lectures, whose object is to defend the Gospel ac- 
counts of miracles against disbelievers, discredit Catholic mira- 
cles and ignore all other miracles than those recorded in the 
canonical scriptures. The same course of reasoning adopted 
by the Bampton lectures would suffice to substantiate other ac- 
counts of miracles, but the lectures skillfully avoid that con- 
clusion by ignoring the events presented as miraculous. 

For the purpose of the argument the word "miracle" is 
here employed in the ordinary sense in which it is popularly 
employed, viz: An event occurring or effect brought about 
by means beyond or above the natural laws known to physical 
science. 

As a rule orthodox Protestants scout all accounts of 
modern miracles, but there are exceptions to the rule; notably 
among the revivalists who in their zeal tell the most marvelous 
stories of divine preservation of life; rescue from death by 
accident, famine, pestilence or assassination. 



THE BAMPTON LECTURES. 



EFFORTS OF PROTESTANTS TO ARREST THE RESULT 
OF THEIR OWN DOUBTS. 

The efforts of Protestants to discredit and cause disbelief 
in "Catholic" miracles had an unforeseen effect. It aroused a 
spirit of investigation and one effect of that was the gradual 
discrediting not only of all ecclesiastical and apostolic mira- 
cles but widespread attacks on the belief in miracles of any- 
kind. This skenticism seems to have invaded the churches 
and the inroads of the spirit of inquiry, skepticism and criti- 
cism were so great that the churches found themselves com- 
pelled to take the defensive. 

In the course of time the ablest men in all the orthodox 
churches were retained to deliver sermons and lectures; to* 
write replies to and refutations of the arguments of those who 
discredited or belittled miracles in any age. The result is a 
vast mass of literature, widely diffused; much of it conflicting 
and inconsistent, but all tending to preserve the foundation of 
orthodoxy, which, if miracles and myths should be proved to 
be synonymous, would crumble like the mortar in the Buden- 
siek tenement house of New York (which was made princi- 
pally of mud) and bury many pious people in the ruins. 

The Bamnton lecture series was one of the most notable 
of the organized defenses of the miraculous origin of Chris- 



TO PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

tianity. The fund to support these lectures was a bequest by 
John Bampton, canon of Salisbury, who died in 1751 and left 
his wealth in trust to support the lecture courses. 

John Tyndall deals without mercy with the distinction be- 
tween miracles and special providences which Dr. Mozley, one 
of the Bampton lecturers, attempted to establish. In "Frag- 
ments of Science/' page 379, Tyndall says arguments against 
modern miracles are quite as forcible against ancient, in which 
all Christians believe, and adds that in the "fascination of a 
desire to establish or avoid a certain result — a favorite pastime 
with some minds — they mix proof and trust, which was dan- 
gerous to scientific minds. What must it be to Mozley's in- 
discriminate audiences." 

Lecky, in his "Rationalism in Europe," shows how men, 
whose minds had once been started in the direction of doubt 
of the miraculous, rushed from polytheism past monotheism 
to atheism and placed the clergy and the churchmen in general 
in the awkward position of teaching the miraculous of the 
past and denying the possibility of it in the present. The in- 
consistency of orthodoxy, so far as the established church of 
England is concerned, is illustrated by a controversy "Chris- 
tianity and Agnosticism," published by Appleton & Co. in 1889. 
In that volume three eminent English churchmen, Henry Wace, 
D. D., the Bishop of Peterboro, and W. H. Malloek, com- 
bined their talents in an effort to refute the arguments of Prof. 
Thomas H. Huxley. A perusal of the volume will show how 
churchmen stagger under the burden they have assumed. 

William Howitt, in speaking of the apostolic miracles, and 



THE BAMPTON LECTURES. IT 

what appeared to be general Protestant disbelief in them, said: 
"If they are not true, Christianity is not true. If they are 
true, the fault lies with us if we lack the power of performing 
them; we have not the vital Christianity and only half Chris- 
tianity.*' Howitt was a clergyman and was eminent in litera- 
ture in his day. 

EMINENT BELIEVERS IN MIRACLES. 
It seems strange, passing strange, that those who have 
written volumes in defense of the gospel accounts of miracles 
should either ignore the accounts of apostolic miracles, those 
of the early fathers, or of latter years, yet this is done. E. A. 
Bertram, in his "Homeletic Encyclopaedia/' quotes extensively 
from ecclesiastical writers from the earliest days in defense 
and explanation of the miracles of the gospels and follows 
these with equally extensive quotations from like writers to 
discredit later miracles. St. Augustine is first quoted. to the 
effect that miracles had ceased and that they "would not move 
if not wonderful and if usual would not be wonderful." In a 
foot note, however, the compiler quotes later words of Augus- 
tine which say miracles were being wrought "even now," which 
was in the fifth century, Augustine's latest writings having 
been done in 429. All the other authorities quoted range from 
the eleventh century down to Henry Ward Beecher, except 
Gregory, who was so much of a wonder-worker that he was on 
that account surnamed Thaumaturgis. The accounts of the 
miracles he performed challenge the capacity of the reader to 
believe. Gregory died in the year 234, so that his testimony, 
as well as his miracles, may be left out of consideration. 



t 2 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

The late Cardinal Newman published a work on the mira- 
cles of the Roman Catholic church, but Protestants, of course, 
ignore it. It may be remarked, apropos of what is recognized 
or ignored by Protestants and seetarists (if they are not the 
same), that for years they ignored Newman's magnificent 
hymn, "Lead, Kindly Light," because, after he wrote it, he be- 
came a Catholic and a priest. It is the purpose, here, however, 
to deal with Protestant doubt and effort to discredit all mira- 
cles of modern times, and especially the healing of diseases, 
so that Newman may be left out of the account for the present, 
at least. 



EPISCOPAL MIRACLES. 



WHY THEY AND BELIEF IN THEM ARE HARD TO FIND. 
SOME STRIKING EXCEPTIONS TO THE RULE. 

The reason this article, devoted to miracles and the belief 
in them in the Anglican church (which includes the Protestant- 
Episcopal church in the United States), is short, is that belief 
in modern miracles is discouraged by that organization. While 
the book of common prayer indicates a belief that God will 
comply with requests for blessings, the writers of the church 
have left very little record of events of a marvelous character 
or of a practical belief in the miraculous beyond the miracles of 
the bible. 

A search of the available books on the subject resulted in 
the discovery of some striking exceptions to the rule of disbe- 
lief. Macaulay, in Vol. 1, page 61, of his history of England, 
says that it was objected to Henry VIII being the head of the 
church, that St. Paul had spoken of certain persons whom the 
Holy Ghost had made overseers and shepherds of the faithful. 
Henry's friends were ready with the answer that he was the 
very overseer, the very shepherd whom the Holy Ghost had 
appointed and to whom the expression of St. Paul applied. 
Among those who held that view was Cranmer, who taught that 
the royal and sacerdotal characters had been inseparably 
joined by divine ordinance. 

When Elizabeth came to the throne this idea had to be 
remodeled and the thirty-seventh article of religion was ac- 



I4 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

cordingly framed. It declares that the ministering of God's 
word does not belong to princes, though Cranmer had pre- 
viously declared that God had committed to Christian princes 
the whole care of all their subjects, as well concerning the ad- 
ministration of God's word for the cure of souls as concerning 
the administration of things political. In a foot note to page 
62 Macaulay says "these are Cranmer's own words." 

This exception to the rule of disbelief in the miraculous, 
was a political necessity, just as was its modification. It very 
naturally recalls what was said of Abraham Lincoln's opinion 
about hell. When asked, after hearing some stories of atroci- 
ties to Union soldiers in Confederate prisons, if he did not be- 
lieve in hell, he is reported to have answered: "It may be a 
military necessity." 

Protestantism in England in its early history was not 
favorable for the growth of miracles. It presented no encour- 
agement of either climate or soil. So far was it from approv- 
ing efforts at that part of the teachings of Jesus, that early in 
the eighteenth century it expelled certain of its ministers who 
believed in healing the sick, as will be seen elsewhere. It also 
caused the expulsion from England of certain French Protest- 
ant exiles who believed their leaders to be able to even raise 
the dead. A remnant of the sect thus expelled still exists in the 
United States, mostly in Pennsylvania, and its members are 
known as Schwenkfeldians. Other isolated remnants are oc- 
casionally met in other states and in Europe. 

It did not extinguish all belief in miracle working, however. 
Conyers Middleton, D. D., who distinguished himself in the 



EPISCOPAL MIRACLES. j J 

first half of the eighteenth century as a writer on religious and 
political subjects did not agree with the church of which he 
was a minister. In Leslie Stephen's "English Thought in the 
Eighteenth Century** Middleton is noticed quite extensively. 
Stephen says Middleton asked by insinuation if St. Augustine 
is discredited concerning miracles, why should Moses or 
Matthew be believed, and if Augustine is believed why not also 
accounts of modern miracles. 

In recent years Canon Farrar, one of the most prominent 
prelates of the Church of England, takes both sides of the 
subject. In his "Lives of the Fathers" he speaks incredulously 
of the miracles ascribed to Gregory, who is classed as a saint 
by Catholics. He says Gregory had a weakness for collectir^; 
the bones of martyrs, but he also mentions, without question, 
miraculous cures attributed to those relics. He also tells of 
St. Augustine unconsciously healing Paulus and Palladia, The 
beneficiaries in this ease were a young man and his sister, who, 
while seeking aid from the saint, fainted in his church. When 
they recovered consciousness, the infirmities of which they 
came to be healed had disappeared. 

These are, of course, Catholic miracles but not "Popish," 
as they occurred at a time when there was no objection to 
popery. They are principally significant because they are men- 
tioned by so high a church dignitary and authority as Canon 
Farrar, after his predecessors had so generally, and almost 
unanimously, treated Augustine as a deluder in the matter of 
his marvelous stories. Indeed, they quote him to the effect 
that no miracles were performed in his day, as if to prove him 



j 5 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

a liar on his own testimony. 

The only miracle Parrar attributes directly to Augustine is 
quoted from the saint's biographer, Possidius. It is the healing 
of an unnamed sick man. On this Parrar comments: 

It must be classed with similar incidents and simi- 
lar testimonies in all ages, even down to our own. 
Further on he says such miracles stand on a level with the 
miracles wrought at the exhibitions of the Holy Coat of Treves, 
in Prussia. This Holy Coat is alleged to be that for which the 
Roman soldiers cast lots at the crucifixion, a mere sight of 
which cures all manner of ills, but it is a Catholic relic and 
the miracles are like unto it. 

Butler (Catholic), in his "Lives of the Saints," quotes Dr. 
Cave, whom he describes as an eminent Protestant authority, 
in support of the miracles of St. Ambrose, as being well authen- 
ticated by evidence. 

Among those clergymen of the English church who did not 
adopt the views of the majority on the subject was William 
Stephen Gilly. M. A., etc, prebendary of Durham. In a volume 
published in London in 1827 he quotes approvingly from 
Boyer's history of the Vaudois of the miraculous escape of 
those whom the Presbyterians claim as of their fold. The story 
is told elsewhere under the head of "Presbyterian Ideas," 

If it were allowable to quote from books evidently pub- 
lished for Sunday school libraries, this chapter might be greatly 
enlarged, but I prefer to cite, with few exceptions, the cases 
that seem to be well authenticated by well known writers or 
clergymen of the church. 



PRESBYTERIAN IDEAS. 

LATTER DAY MIRACLES VIEWED WITH DIS PAYOR BY 
CALVIN'S DISCIPLES. 

Presbyterians furnish fewer evidences of a belief in the 
miraculous than most other sectarians. The spirit of the early 
Presbyterians which impelled rather than persuaded them to 
oppose everything that smacked of ''popery" made them studi- 
ously avoid noticing events that seemed supernatural. Their 
records are not wholly destitute of such evidence, however 

"Presbyterians" is the title of a work by Rev. George P. 
Hays, D. D. LL.D. It is a concise history of the origin and 
career of the churches, of that denomination, with introductions 
by Rev. John Hall, D. D. LL.D., and Rev. William E. Moore, 
D. D. LL.D. Dr. Hays includes among Presbyterians the Wal- 
denses of the continent of Europe, but he does not go so far 
as do thir own historians in ascribing their preservation to 
direct interposition of Providence. On page 40 of his work he 
says the Reformation and revival of religion were the results 
of the outpouring of the Spirit of God upon the church at large 
at. a time when providences were fully ripe. On page 143 the 
historian, speaking of the "spiritual darkness" in which the 
eighteenth century closed, the loss of Harvard College to or- 
thodox Congregationaiists and the revival of A. D. 1800, says: 

The problem of the time was to find some perma- 



jg PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

nent system for reaching the whole country with the 
few available men on hand. God raised up choice men 
like Nettleton in Connecticut, Griffin in Boston, Finney 
in Ohio, etc. * * * * They were specially endowed 
with power from on high. 

ORIGIN OF CAMP MEETINGS. 
Dr. Hays tells how camp meetings originated with those 
Presbyterians who afterwards formed the Cumberland sect of 
that denomination, but he touches very lightly upon the "bodily 
exercises" of which Elders Jacob Knapp and Peter Cartwright 
said so much. He shows that it was the resort to revival 
methods that evolved the camp meeting, and what others call 
"the jerks" are very tamely described by him. 

In a chapter written by two ministers of the Cumberland 
church, J. M. Howard and J. M. Hubbert, they say that when 
the proposition was made to Samuel McAdow for the revival- 
istic Presbyterians to secede and set up an independent synod, 
early in the nineteenth century, that picus man spent the whole 
night in prayer and in the morning announced that he had re- 
ceived sufficient light to justify him in joining the new move- 
ment. Thus the Cumberland Presbyterian church is in some 
measure, at least, dependent on an answer to man's prayers for 
its origin, although disbelief in the doctrines of predestination, 
and especially that part of it that taught infant damnation, 
was a powerful factor. 

That this sect believe in direct communication of God to 
man, akin to inspiration, is evident in the way they defended 
the licensing to preach of men who had not been thoroughly 



PRESBYTERIAN IDEAS. IQ 

educated. In the chapter devoted to the Cumberland church 
its authors say: "They believe that some who become religious 
late in life are called to preach the Gospel and that the strict 
Presbyterian rule would prevent these from obeying God's 
call." 

Calvinism, as taught by the "regular" or original Presby- 
terians, deals with the miraculous in its origin. It teaches the 
doctrine of man's total depravity and that to be saved he must 
be born again. The miraculous feature of this teaching is 
found in the dogma that the new birth is not subject to man's 
will, but is the gift of the Holy Ghost. As the Holy Ghost is 
omnipotent and omniscient. He must have known from all 
eternity what He should do in all eternity to come. He must 
have known to whom He should give this new birth and herein 
is the dogma of election or predestination. 

Another evidence of Presbyterian belief in divine inter- 
position is given on page 93 of "Presbyterians," where the his- 
torian tells of the revivalists of 1740-41 entering churches to 
preach, against the objections of the pastors, on the ground 
that they had "the right to follow out what they called divine 
leading, even though nobody but themselves were able to un- 
derstand the supposed providential indications." 

The same historian quotes from a letter of Cotton Mather, 
of the year 1718. thus: 

We are comforted with great numbers of the op- 
pressed brethren coming from the north of Ireland. 
The glorious Providence of God in the removal hither 
of so many of a desirable class hath doubtless very 
great intentions in it. 



20 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

Though Mather was not a Presbyterian, the people of 
whom he wrote were of that persuasion and the quotation of 
his words in the history may he regarded as a Presbyterian 
endorsement of special providences, alias miracles. 
VAUDOIS MIRACLES. 

A history of the Vaudois, or Waldenses, who are claimed 
as Presbyterians, by Antoine Monastier, one of their pastors, 
was translated by J. M. McClintock, who, in a preface to the 
American edition, wrote: "The Vaudois have been preserved 
from age to age amid the Alpine fastnesses and valleys of Pied- 
mont—a perpetual testimony, at once to the providence of God 
and the persecuting cruelty of that ecclesiastical power which 
for centuries has 'exalted itself against God.' " Monastier, in 
describing a battle of the Vaudois against the papal troops 
sent to exterminate them in 1488, says the Vaudois prepared 
for the conflict by prayer. Their enemies, seeing them pros- 
trate, ridiculed them, "being full of confidence in their own 
numbers, equipments and valor." The papist leader, LeNoir, 
is described as "another Goliath defying Israel, boasted with 
horrible blasphemies of the carnage he would make among the 
heretical herdsmen." Having incautiously raised his visor on 
account of the heat, a Vaudois arrow pierced his head and 
killed him. The historian thus attributes the result of the con- 
sequent flight of the papists: "But the Divine mercy secured 
the victory to the smaller number; God hearkened to those 
who relied on him." 

Further along in the same chapter the historian describes 
the invaders trying to reach those of the Vaudois who had fled 



PRESBYTERIAN IDEAS. 2I 

to an almost inaccessible spot, the Pra-di-torre. When they 
reached a narrow gorge they were suddenly enveloped in a fog 
so thick they dared not advance because they "could not distin- 
guish a single object," and he continues: 

The Angrognines, emboldened by this interposition 
of Providence in their favor, issued forth from their 
retreats, vigorously attacked their perplexed aggres- 
sors, whom they defeated, put to flight and pursued. 

Monastier, on page 136 of his work, describes the Reforma- 
tion as a miracle of mercy which "God was pleased to effect in 
many places/' by raising up Luther, Zwingli and others as a 
result of the "direct intervention of Divine Providence." The 
w r ork having been translated for the London Religious Tract 
Society, before the middle of the present century, naturally 
becomes an orthodox Protestant document by adoption, with 
all its belief in fifteenth century miracles. 

As to the rsaiity of Vaudois miracles, William Stephen 
Gilly, prebendary of Durham, who. is referred to among Episco- 
pal authorities, quotes approvingly fr,om Boyer s history of that 
people of the miraculous escape of 800 or 900 of those Protest- 
ants from the country into which French and Sardinian op- 
pression had driven them. Boyer says the country was guarded 
by 3000 hostile Catholic troops, which greatly increased the 
natural difficulties of the mountainous region. These Vaudois 
had been granted amnesty by the Duke of Sardinia, who also 
gave them liberty to settle in his dominions, and their victories 
over the hostile legions Boyer says formed a miraculous pre- 



22 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

servation of these Protestants from Catholic hostility. He 
further says of the change of heart of the Duke of Sardinia, 
that "Gocl sent a spirit of division between the King of Prance 
and the Duke of Savoy, insomuch that they strove who should 
first gain the Vaudois to their party." (Boyer's Vaudois, page 
226.) 

This movement against the Vaudois began in 1686 and the 
divine interposition in their behalf was in 1690. This was near- 
ly fourteen centuries after the time at which orthodox Protest- 
ants of to-day assert that the age of miracles ended. 
A PRECOCIOUS PROPHET. 

Rev. Dr. Alexander Carlyle tells in his autobiography how 
opposition to his appointment as minister at Inveresk, Scot- 
land, was overcome. The position was in the gift of a certain 
nobleman who had promised it to him. The people wanted an 
older man, as Mr. Carlyle was not 24 when he was appointed, 
and were preparing to make his position uncomfortable. 

The opponents were in the habit of frequenting a shop 
kept by a woman who had known Carlyle from infancy. When 
they spoke to her of an older man she told them they might as 
well be reconciled for Carlyle had been foreordained to the 
place— she heard him prophesy it when he was but 6 years old. 
The opponents were terrified at the idea of setting up opposi- 
tion to a "meenister" sent by God, and especially one who had 
been foreordained to the place. The result was that he went 
there, won their love and remained fifty years. 

This prophesy was simply an "auld wife's tale," but it 
illustrates the belief of the Scottish Presbyterian in the mira- 



PRESBYTERIAN IDEAS. 2 ~ 

culous. Carlyle says the foundation for it was the old woman's 
fondness for him in his childhood. After caressing him as he 
stood on a stairhead at her shop, she expressed the hope that 
he should succeed his father, who was the minister of her town. 
The child, thinking she expected his father to die soon, 
said: "No, I'll ne'er be minister here. Yonder is my church," 
and he pointed to the spire of Inveresk, which is not far dis- 
tant from his native home. This the old woman considered 
prophesy that the child was foreordained for Inveresk and the 
people of that parish accepted her interpretation and dared 
not "quarrel with God's appointed." 



ARGYLL'S IDEAS. 



A PRESBYTERIAN DUKE'S DEFENSE OF THE BELIEF 
IN THE MIRACULOUS. 

The Duke of Argyll, father of the present Marquis of 
Lome,, who is a son-in-law of Queen Victoria, published in 
1866 a volume containing a. series of papers in support of the 
belief in miracles. These papers were originally published in 
various British periodicals but were enlarged and corrected as 
criticisms of and answers to them appeared from representa- 
tives of the various schools of skepticism and materialistic 
philosophy. 

The Duke distinguished himself before he attained his 
majority as a defender of Scotch Presbyterianism and hence 
his work on miracles must be regarded as the expression of 
an orthodox opinion. His book is entitled "The Reign of Law," 
and so popular does it appear to have been that several editions 
have been uublished on both sides of the Atlantic. The first 
chapter is devoted to the supernatural. In it he says that 
miracles are really events brought about by the operation of 
law and he argues very closely to show the reasonableness of 
this view.- He says, page 13: 

Advancing knowledge of physical laws has been 

accompanied by advancing power over the physical 

world. It has enabled us to do a thousand things, any 



ARGYLL'S IDEAS. 2 c 

one of which, a few generations ago, would have been 
considered supernatural. 

In this connection he mentions a lecturer on the subject 
of heat, who exhibited many wonderful things, among them 
ice frozen in contact with red-hot crucibles. Upon this he re- 
marks: 

If the progress of discovery is as rapid for the 
next 400 years as it has heen during the last period 
of the same extent, men will be able to do many things 
which would now appear to be supernatural. 

No man can have any difficulty in believing that 
there are natural laws of which he is ignorant; nor in 
conceiving that there may be beings who do know them, 
and can use them even as he himself now uses the few 
laws with which he is acquainted. 
* * * 

The relation in which God stands to those rules of 

His government which are called "laws" is, of course, 

an inscrutable mystery to us. 

The Duke in the course of his definition of terms prepara- 
tory to entering upon his arguments quotes approvingly from 
Dr. Horace Bushnell, whose work is noticed elsewhere: 

That is supernatural, whatever it be ; that is either 

not in the chain of natural cause and effect, or which 

acts on the chain of cause and effect in nature, from 

without the chain. 

After arguing that the spread of Christianity and the pre- 



2 5 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

serration of the Jews as a distinct people are the results of 
Divine interposition, i. e., miracles, he moralizes on the belief 
in miracles being essential to religion, and says: 

Once admit that there is a Being who — irrespective 
of any theory as to the relation in which the laws of 
; Nature stand to His will— has at least an infinite 
knowledge of those laws and an infinite power of put- 
ting them to use — then miracles lose every element of 
inconceivability. In respect to the greatest and highest 
of all — that restoration of the breath of life which is 
not more mysterious than its original gift — there is no 
answer to the question which Paul asks: "Why should 
it be thought a thing incredible by you that God should 
raise the dead?" 

Were I to quote further from Argyll or from those divines 
whose writings he quotes in support of his position, much mat- 
ter that has already been written would be repeated and this 
work be made unnecessarily long. I therefore simply mention 
the names of a few as James McCosh, LL.D.; Rev J. McLeod 
Campbell; John Tulloch. D. D., principal of St. Mary's College, 
St. Andrews, Edinburgh. As the work contains no direct refer- 
ence to recent miracles, but mentions approvingly Dr. Bush- 
nell's work on that subject, it is fair to construe its arguments 
as applying to miracles of all times. This construction seems 
warranted also by a line in the preface to the fifth edition, viz: 
"The argument it maintains is at variance with the philosophy 
of some of the most active and popular thinkers of the time; 
and on a few important points it deviates from the view com- 



ARGYLL'S IDEAS. 27 

monly adopted by men with whom I am more generally 
agreed." In two copious notes appended to the volume he an- 
swers two of his critics, Dr. Ward, editor of the Dublin Review, 
and Rev. J. P. Mahaffy, but in neither is the critic shown to 
have disputed the arguments supporting belief in miracles. In 
a note appended to page 19 he quotes Rev. J. M. Campbell in 
support of his theory that miracles are in accordance with 
law over which God, the infinite author, has infinite control, 
though these laws and their operation transcend our knowl- 
edge. 

One who cares to go into minute details of the study of 
natural laws and trace their wide ramifications will find "The 
Reign of Law" a most interesting volume aside from its chap- 
ter on the supernatural. 

His grace quotes the philosopher Locke to the effect that 
we can never know what is above nature unless we know all 
that is within nature, and on this he comments: 

In this passage Locke * * * * misses another 
truth, quite as important — that a miracle would still be 
a miracle even though we did know the laws through 
which it was accomplished, provided those laws, 
though not beyond human knowledge, were beyond 
human control. We might know the conditions neces- 
sary to the performance of a miracle although utterly 
unable to bring those conditions about. Yet a work 
performed by the bringing about of conditions which 
are out of human reach would certainly be a work at- 
testing superhuman power. 



PURITANS AND MIRACLES. 



EVIDENCE OF THE PILGRIM FATHERS' BELIEF THAT 
GOD INTERVENED IN THEIR BEHALF. 

Though a majority, perhaps, of those who claim direct 
religious descent from the Plymouth pilgrims are the most 
active in sowing disbelief in miracles, the history of the Pilgrim 
settlement in Massachusetts contains many acknowledgments 
of such belief. In 1867 a history of the Pilgrim Fathers was 
published by the American Tract Society. The author was W. 
Carlos Martyn, who also wrote a history of the English Puri- 
tans. In giving an account of the rise of Puritanism in Eng- 
land Martyn attributes it to zeal with which the Lord touched 
the hearts of a number of yeomen in the North of England. 
When describing the voyage to Holland, in 1608, the historian 
quotes Young, a former historian, to the effect that when the 
ship was driven by storms to the coast of Norway and was 
about to be wrecked, God rescued them. Young was on board 
the ship and his words are thus given: 

But when man's hop© and help wholly failed, the 
Lord's power and mercy appeared for their recovery, 
for the ship rose again and gave the mariners courage 
once more to manage her. While the waters ran into 
their very ears and mouths and all cried, "We sink, we 
sink," they also said, if not miraculous, yet with great 



PURITANS AND MIRACLES. 2Q 

height of Divine faith, "Yet, Lord, thou canst save." 
And He who holds the winds in His fist and the waters 
in the hollow of His hand did hear and save them. 
Then when the religious adventurers wearied of Holland 
and decided to try the wilds of America, Martyn says they 
"announced their intention" to follow Columbus, and launch 
boldly across the Atlantic, "trusting in God." Having come to 
this decision they, "after humble prayers unto God for his 
direction and assistance," held another conference as to What 
part of America they should decide upon. As they were not in 
favor with the government and had no hope of obtaining a 
charter for land, they determined in this, as in other things, 
to rest on God's providence, but they also rested somewhat in 
London merchants, who formed a company, got a charter and 
became partners with the Pilgrims. The terms were hard 
upon the adventurers, but they accepted them and "had a sol- 
emn meeting and a day of humiliation to seek the Lord for his 
direction." 

Martyn closes ChapterVI of his work with a reflection on 
the singular combination of circumstances which produced the 
Plymouth settlement, and says: 

God builded better than men knew and, when the 
time was ripe, He chose the Pilgrims, Englishmen, 
Protestants, exiles for religion, men disciplined by mis- 
fortune, cultivated by opportunities of extensive obser- 
vation, equal in rank as in rights, bound by no code but 
that of religion and the public will, and with these ele- 
ments He planted a model state and bade it grow into 



~ PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

a democracy, Christian commonwealth, that it might 

be, at once, an exemplar and a benefactor to mankind. 

These extracts are sufficient to show that the Pilgrim 
fathers in the seventeenth century and the American Tract 
Society in 1867 believed in miraculous intervention by God in 
the affairs of mankind. But the Puritans also* believed that 
God intervened in their behalf to save them from starvation, 
from the treachery of the Indians and from the consequences 
of the folly and vice of irreligious settlers. On page 198, after 
moralizing on the futility of the communal experiment of the 
first two years and its abandonment, Bradford, one of the 
historians of the colony, is Quoted thus: 

Let none object that this is man's corruption and 

nothing to the philosophy (socialistic) per se. Yes; 

but since all men have this corruption in them, God, in 

His wisdom, saw another course fitter for them. 

When the colonists finished planting the second year all 
their food had been consumed, "and they rested on God's provi- 
dence alone." Wherefore Bradford says, "they above all peo- 
ple in the world had occasion to pray to God to give them their 
daily bread." After detailing how a scanty supply of food was 
procured the history shows that just as the colonists were ex- 
pecting a bounteous corn crop a drouth came and famine 
threatened. 

In this emergency, the devout Pilgrims resorted 

to the "mercy seat and besought Him who had so often 

appeared to succor them to aid them now. A special 

day of fasting and prayer was appointed. " 



PURITANS AND MIRACLES. ^ x 

It has been well said that answers to prayer do not 
generally come with observation. They are often sent 
in a way which is hid from most persons and frequent- 
ly even from those who receive them. There are, how- 
ever, instances in which these answers are so striking 
as to be visible to all. 

Thus writes Martyn, the modern historian of the American 
Tract Society, and he follows it up by saying that the fast day 
opened with a cloudless sky, but he quotes Winslow, another 
writer from observation, to show that at the close of the ser- 
vices the sky was overcast and a soft rain that began next day 
continued fourteen days. On this Winslow remarks: 

It was hard to say whether our withered corn or 
our drooping affections were most quickened and re- 
vived, such was the bounty and goodness of our God. 
God again intervened to defeat a conspirator against the 
prosperity of the Puritans. One of the merchant adventurers 
by trickery gained a charter or patent that included all their 
lands and much more, all in his own name. He set out with a 
large ship for those days but was twice driven back by storms 
or defects in his vessel and he "was by this time grown so siak 
of his patent that he vomited it up." 

I have here only quoted from or referred to half of Mar- 
tyn's history and have not sought to amplify the evidence of 
Puritan belief in special provicTence or miracles. I used Mar- 
tyn's work because it was the most compendious and because 
it bore the orthodox endorsement I have mentioned. 

Not only did these godly men believe that they were mira- 

„ ... g 



~ 2 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

culously saved from death by wreck, famine and savage war- 
fare and from the machinations of civilized enemies, but that 
the Lord had depopulated the region to which He guided them. 
Hutchinson's history says (Vol. I, page 38) : 

Our ancestors supposed an immediate interposition 
of Providence in the great mortality among the In- 
dians, to make room for the settlement of the English. 
Palfry, in his history published in 1892, in a note on page 
177 of Vol. I, comments on this remark of Hutchinson: 

He who understands that there is a divine govern- 
ment of human affairs, and who recalls what has fol- 
lowed upon the occupation of this region by civilized 
men, may well hesitate to pronounce that they erred in 
that belief. 

Those who want further evidence that Congregationalists 
did not always discredit miracles should/beside reading the 
sketch of the first Puritan settlement in New England, read the 
biographies of Increase Mather, first president of Harvard Col- 
lege, and his still more widely noted son, Cotton Mather. They 
believed in other miracles than those for evil and by the power, 
of the devil. They believed themselves to be God-guided and 
inspired, at least to some extent. That the record Cotton 
Mather made is disgraceful alike to the church of which he was 
a minister and to Christianity in no wise militates against the 
fact that he represented Congregationalist thought in New 
England in the day in which he lived. And that thought was, 
when interpreted by the acts of its exponents, that the devil 
was a great power; that God's power could not be relied on to 



PURITANS AND MIRACLES. ~~ 

counteract it; that man had to oppose his own power to it and 
stamp it out by murder and cruelties beside which sudden mur- 
der was mercy. The only logical deduction is that the followers 
of Mather thought the devil more powerful than God and them- 
selves more powerful than the devil. 

If belief in miracles and belief in witchcraft are both be- 
lief in the supernatural, then those who planted the Congrega- 
tional church on American soil believed in the interposition of 
supernatural power for evil if they did not believe in it for 
good. For the purposes of this work this reference is sufficient 
for this chapter. 

On the subject of belief in miracles and treating witchcraft 
as miraculous, Lecky says in "Rationalism in Europe" that 
Protestantism "from the beginning looked upon modern mira- 
cles (except those which were comprised under the head of 
witchcraft) with an aversion and distrust that contrasts re- 
markably with the unhesitating credulity of its opponents." 
Lecky cites a number of cases that form striking exceptions 
to the rule of doubt which gradually extended from modern 
miracles to those of the fathers, after Cons-tan tine's conver- 
sion. The wave of doubt having been set in motion the theolo- 
gians found themselves unable to arrest it. Indeed, they 
seemed to fear that they would be overwhelmed by it, and 
Lecky says Christianity became an attenuated system of moral 
philosophy, an admirable auxiliary to the police force. 



STARTLING MIRACLES. 



AN EMINENT CONGREGATIONALIST DIVINE'S WORK 
ON DIVINE HEALING. 

Among the most eminent and respectable of modern theo- 
logians who have written on the subject of miracles is Horace 
Bushnell. In his work, ''Natural and Supernatural," a work of 
372 pages, he refers to numerous cases of marvelous cures as 
late as the present century and some of them in America. 
Those of ealier day were performed among the Huguenots who 
fled to England: among the Jansenists in Paris; at St. Medard, 
in France and by George Fox, the originator of the Quaker sect, 
but Bushnell, in Fox's cases, omits the dates and other par- 
ticulars, as if these were too well known to call for further de- 
tails than that they were performed in Maryland. 

The most marvelous thing he relates is a story of Arthur 
Howell, a Quaker leather currier, who worked in Philadelphia, 
and who relieved the memory of a deceased woman from the 
suspicion of a horrible crime, though he had never known the 
woman in life. Her innocence was revealed to him as her 
funeral was passing him on the street and he stopped the pro- 
cession to proclaim what was afterwards abundantly proved. 
This story is not dated, but it appears on page 325 of "Natural 
and Supernatural." 

Bushnell takes the Christian Observer to task for discredit- 



STARTLING MIRACLES. ~ ,- 

ing miracles and says it takes substantially the same ground 
as the atheistic Hume, viz: "We must admit of any solution* 
rather than a miracle." Upon this Dr. Bushnell comments: 
Little wonder it is that we have difficulty in sus- 
taining the historic facts of Christianity when the most 
Christian, the most evangelical teachers, assume so 
readily the utter incredibility of any such gifts and 
wonders as the gospels report and as they, themselves, 
have it for a righteousness to believe. 

This is quoted from page 329 and from that to the 346th 
page he relates several cases of what he terms miraculous cures 
and solutions of grave difficulties, such as one hears at experi- 
ence meetings in Christian Scientist churches on Wednesday 
evenings. Bushnell would not sneer at these relations as do 
many if not most orthodox clergymen of to-day, though he was 
a D. D. of the Wesleyan University and an LL.D. of Harvard. 
It is true that he was accused of heresy in writing his "God in 
Christ," but he was acquitted by the association of Congrega- 
tionalist ministers who tried him. He wrote his "Natural and 
Supernatural" before "Science and Health" was even outlined 
and it was published in 1858. 

In the face of these learned men, who support their opin- 
ions by excellent reasonings, the lesser lights of some orthodox 
churches, to whom Dr. Bushnell should be respectable author- 
ity, stigmatize as shallow, ill-trained, ill- brained and fanatical 
those who believe in the healing power of mind, even with the 
living evidences before them in the forms of wives, husbands, 
brothers, sisters, parents and children rescued from the verge 



36 



STARTLING MIRACLES. 



of the grave by its agency. Such doubters try to jest fact out 
of existence to sneer down truth and, by the methods of the 
stump orator and the police court attorney, to discredit even 
the words of Him who spake as never man spake. 



JVIethodist JWiraeles. 



EVANGELISTS' TESTIMONY. 

METHODIST REVIVALISTS TELL HOW GOD GAVE THEM 
SPECIAL AID. 

That John Wesley, the originator of Methodism, believed 
in miracles is evident from the history of Methodism by Abel 
Stevens, D. D., New York and London, 1858. In the earliest 
pages of the work several events are described from which the 
inference is unavoidable that the author regards them as of 
supernatural origin. The "physical phenomena" or "jerks" are 
attributed to the devil, but the rescue of Wesley when he was 
a child from his father's house, which was burning, is related 
as if it were miraculous, though details related show that it 
was somewhat marvelous yet was well accounted for on purely 
natural grounds. The tone of the author shows that he regards 
it as miraculous and this indicates that the belief survived 
among Methodist doctors of divinity until after the middle of 
this century. 

The physical phenomena were such as were common, and 
still are, at revivals and camp meetings in some parts of the 
X'nited States. These Wesley attributed to Satan mimicking 
God's work, but the historian argues that the primitive Chris- 
tians "had the jerks" and the early American Presbyterians 



EVANGELISTS' TESTIMONY. ~ Q 

were similarly affected at camp meetings, and he fortifies his 
position by relating numerous wonders of that kind. 

WESLEY'S ARGUMENT. 
Wesley's argument that miracles are realities is that all 
Christians believe in a general providence; that there could be 
no general providence if there were no special providence, be- 
cause a whole without parts is inconceivable, and that special 
providences are miracles. In answer to the self-propounded 
question, "Do you expect miracles?" he answered: 

Certainly I do if I believe the Bible; for the Bible 
teaches me that God hears and answers prayer, but 
every answer to prayer is properly a miracle. If natural 
causes take their course, if things go on in their natural 
way, it is no answer at all. 

Rev. Joshua Marsden, an English Wesleyan, 'after a visit 
to the United States in 1812, published a sketch of Francis 
Asbury, one of the early bishops of the Methodist church in 
this country. In the sketch Mr. Marsden said: "Divine wis- 
dom seemed to direct all his undertakings, for he sought its 
counsel upon all occasions." 

"METHODIST FANATICS." 
"A Barrister," in a series of papers on the Evangelical 
sects, in the London Quarterly Review, Vol. IV (1820), com- 
plains of the "bigotry and fanaticism" of the orthodox dissent- 
ers and Methodists of that day. He cited their organs, the 
"Evangelical" and "Methodist" magazines in proof of their 
human weakness. The Methodist Magazine for October, 1804, 



40 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

declared that the recovery of the King in 1788 was due to the 
prayers of John Pawson and his congregation, and this was 
considered proof enough of the charge of fanaticism. 

Itinerant preachers of the Methodist church were repre* 
rented to have had special gifts for causing rain in seasons ot 
drouth, and the magazine is charged with such fanaticism as 
asserting that the Methodists caused the abatement of a plague 
of caterpillars by producing an invasion of crows by which the 
pests were devoured. The barrister quotes quite at length 
from the magazine named, an article written by William Shep~ 
herd of Banbury, who in 1804 claimed to have restored to life 
a child that had died before medical aid could be summoned. 
Shepherd wrote that within an hour and a half after he recalled 
the child's life it had eaten a meal and was playing around the 
house as if nothing unusual had occurred. 

ELDER JACOB KNAPP. 
Elder Jacob Knapp, who was to the East what Peter Cart- 
wright was to the Mississippi valley, adds his •testimony to the 
reality of modern miracles, in his autobiography. After re- 
lating the difficulties with which he contended during his early 
days as an evangelist, he says, on page 32: 

But in my distress I cast my burdens on the Lotrd. 
I sought to know the will of God. I cried unto the Lord 
and, blessed be His name, very soon He made known 
His ways and lifted upon me the light of His counte- 
nance. After spending one whole night in fasting and 
prayer and continuing my fast till midnight, the place 
where I was staying was filled with the manifested 



EVANGELISTS' TESTIMONY. 4J 

Glory of God. His presence was revealed to me, not ex- 
actly in visible form, but as really to my recognition as 
though He had come in person, and a voice seemed to 
say to me: "Hast thou ever lacked a field in which to 
labor?" I answered: "Not a day." "Have I not sustained 
thee and blessed thy labors?" I answered: "Yea, Lord." 
"Then learn that henceforth thou art not dependent on 
thy brethren but upon me. Have no concern, but go 
on in thy work. My grace shall be sufficient for thee." 
I will only make one more reference to Knapp's belief in 
miracles in his behalf. On page 96 of his book he relates that 
in February, 1839, in Rochester, N. Y., while snow lay on the 
ground a mob attacked the church where he w r as preaching, 
when a violent thunder storm arose and the lightning's flashes 
were so vivid that the mob was dispersed. 

PETER CARTWRIGHT. 
What American has not heard of Peter Cartwright? He 
was one of the most notable of pioneer preachers of the Metho- 
dist church in the then far West. He was licensed as an ex- 
horter in 1802 in Kentucky and was during more than half a 
century a very prominent figure and powerful propagator of 
Christianity as expounded by his church. That he believed in 
miracles is more evident in the preface to his autobiography 
than complimentary to the modern Methodist. In his preface 
he says: 

MIRACULOUS DULLNESS. 
When I consider the unsurmountable disadvantages 
and difficulties that the early pioneer Methodist preach- 



4 2 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

ers labored under in spreading the Gospel in these 
western wilds, in the great valley of the Mississippi, 
and contrast the disabilities that surrounded them on 
every hand, with the glorious human advantages that 
are enjoyed by their present successors, it is confound- 
ingly miraculous to me that our modern preachers can- 
not preach better and do more good than they do. 
In describing scenes at camp meetings and revivals, Mr. 
Cartwright tells at some length of "the jerks," a spasmodic 
affliction, that came upon many who were in attendance. He 
grows amusing when he describes the humiliation of finely 
dressed young men and women being seized and the finery of 
the ladies go flying under the influence of these physical phe- 
nomena. One incident which he relates is far from amusing, 
however, and it is here copied. He does not say just when the 
tragic event occurred, but as it was soon after he began his 
ministry it must have occurred not later than 1802. The story 
is this: 

MIRACLE FATAL TO A SCOFFER. 
While I am on this subject I will relate a very 
serious circumstance which I knew to take place with 
a man who had the jerks at a camp meeting on what 
was called the ridge, in William Magee's congregation. 
There was a great work of religion in the encampment. 
The jerks were very prevalent. There was a company 
of drunken rowdies who came to interrupt the meeting. 
These rowdies were headed by a very large drinking 
man. They came with their bottles of whisky in their 



EVANGELISTS' TESTIMONY. , - 

pockets. This large man cursed the jerks and all reli- 
gion. Shortly afterward he t ook the j erks and he 
started to run, but he jerked so powerfully he could not 
get away. He halted among some saplings and, al- 
though he was violently agitated, he took out his bot- 
tle of whisky and swore he would drink the damned 
jerks to death, but he jerked at such a rate he could 
not get the bottle to his mouth, though he tried hard. 
At length he fetched a sudden jerk, and the bottle 
struck a sapling and was broken to pieces and spilled 
his whisky on the ground. There was a great crowd 
gathered around him, and when he lost his whisky he 
became very much enraged, and cursed and swore very 
profanely, his jerks still increasing. At length he 
fetched a very violent jerk, snapped his neck and soon 
expired with his mouth full of cursing and bitterness. 

Cart Wright's comment was this: 

I always looked upon the jerks as a judgment sent 
from God, first, to bring sinners to repentance, and, 
secondly, to show professors that God could work with 
or without means and that He could work over and 
above means and do whatever seemeth Him good, to 
the glory of His grace and the salvation of the world. 
In Chapter IX of Cartwright's autobiography he tells of 
the hardships he endured in Ohio and in getting back to his 
father's home in Kentucky for a new outfit; his receipts dur- 
ing a year not being sufficient to pay for a new suit of clothes. 



.. PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

He set cut with seventy-five cents, but Providence raised up 
friends for him on the way and they voluntarily furnished him 
money. This was in 1807. When he reached Hopkinsvifle, 
Ky., he found a tavern kept by an acquaintance of his father 
and was entertained on credit. During the night the land- 
lord's wife was seized with hysterics and her screams aroused 
the weary preacher, who rose and asked the cause of the trou- 
ble. When it was explained he offered to pray, which offer the 
afflicted woman eagerly accepted. He prayed and sang and the 
poor woman, who w^as described as the sister of an apostate 
Baptist minister, was healed of her disorder and her husband 
was overjoyed. 

I have here cited only sufficient to show that the vener- 
able preacher who spent his life from early manhood to feeble 
age in preaching the Gospel according to the Methodist church, 
agreed with Wesley, its founder, in believing in miracles and 
special providences, in healing by the invocation of divine aid 
and in what Christian Scientists now characterize as "demon- 
strating' for ways and means. 

NEWLAND MAPFIT. 

Elderly people may remember a great revivalist in Rev. 
J. Newland Matnt, who from about 1822 to 1848 created great 
sensations wherever he went. On account of the great scandal 
that surrounded his latter years and his death, his career is 
rarely referred to now by Methodists. He was not only the 
peer of Knapp and Cartwright as an evangelist, but greatly 
superior to them in education. I have been unable to find any 
biography of him beyond the brief sketches in encyclopaedias 



EVANGELISTS' TESTIMONY. .- 

but I am old enough to distinctly remember his visit to my 
native home and the great sensation it created. I also remem- 
ber the stories that were current of miraculous conversions 
and some miraculous occurrences that were hardly religious in 
their character. The first were related by pious people and of 
the others only a part were accepted by the pious. I cannot now 
verify my statements by documentary evidence, but there are 
many living people who will readily recall what I have here 
written as fact. The appalling fate that overtook the once bril- 
liant man, whether he was guilty of all that was charged upon 
him or not, apparently caused most of religious people, ortho- 
dox and "liberal" alike, to let his name drop into' oblivion if 
it would. His few writings are now more rare than valuable, 
I assume, but enough is known of him to show that he and the 
Methodists of his day believed that miracles were wrought by 
more than a dozen of their leaders. 

Rev. Chauncy Giles published a little book in 1890 on the 
efficacy of prayer, but he, like many others who believe that 
prayer is answered, prescribed very minute conditions prece- 
dent to be observed. Among them I failed to find healing of ill- 
ness classed with things that would be "asked amiss," but the 
reverend author does not make it plain that he regards it as 
one of the laudable objects of supplication. 
JACOB GRUBER. 

Jacob G ruber was one of the earliest of Methodist preach- 
ers in the Southern States. He was zealous, earnest, vigorous, 
self-denying, "an unrelenting enemy of ease," and a man of 
unwavering faith. It is related of him in "Methodist Heroes" 



4 6 



PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 



that night once overtook him on a mountain during a heavy 
snow storm and he lost his way. He had to keep moving and 
close to his horse all night to keep from freezing and when 
morning came he reached a cabin before the inmates had risen. 
In response to their congratulations he said the Lord sup- 
ported him and he didn't even take cold. 

Another night he was exposed in a similar manner and in 
the morning he and his horse safely crossed a dangerous river 
on the ice. He did not find the house he was seeking until he, 
and his horse had been without food nearly or quite two days, 
yet again he escaped cold because, he explained, the Lord 
saved him. - 



SAM JONES' EXPERIENCE. 



THE REVIVALIST RELATES THE HISTORY OF HIS CON- 
VERSION AND FIRST SERMON. 
Sam Jones, the great Southern revivalist, opens his auto- 
biography, in his "Own Book," with a quotation from Charles 
G. Finney and applies it to his own case, viz: "It has pleased 
God. in some measure, to connect my name and labors with an 
extensive! movement of the church of Christ." This Jones 
makes rnor^- specific on page 15 of that autobiographical sketch. 
After telling of his dissipation and his promise to his dying 
father to reform he says: 

When peace and pardon were given, after days of 
seeking, I was impressed that I should preach the Gos- 
pel. I did not know from whence these impressions 
came; I thought as did Gideon Ausely,'T cannot preach, 
I am not fit to preach, I do not know anything to 
preach." I sought the advice and counsel of several 
faithful preachers and I believe each of them said the 
same thing: "You are called to preach. You can go 
willingly into it, or you will lose your religion if you 
refuse. * * * I conferred not with flesh and blood 
further bat began immediately to preach the Gospel as 
only a man can preach it who knew but two facts — 
God is good and I am happy in his love. 
Jones then tells the story of his first sermon, which, though 



48 



PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 



lie does not say he was inspired, reads like the relation of a 
miracle. He had gone to an appointment with his grandfather, 
a preacher, who was hoarse. The preacher who was to have 
taken the venerable gentleman's place failed to arrive and 
Grandfather Jones told Sam he must fill the appointment, say- 
ing: "If God is calling you to preach, you can preach; come 
on in the pulpit." 

He then describes his opening, but says he has forgotten 
his exigesis and analysis and says "hundreds were melted to 
tears and many went forward for prayers." After service his 
grandfather assured him that God had called him and bade 
him go ahead with the work. 

Jones has gone ahead and his fame as a revival preacher 
is equal to, though not of the same kind, as that of Professor 
Finney, whose case seems to him so much like his own. The 
thousands who have crowded Sam Jones' meetings in all parts 
of the United States have heard him relate his own experience 
and many other stories of miraculous conversions, testify that 
Protestant sectarians believe in miracles, each within their 
own sects and in answer to the prayers of their favorite 
preachers, but each are skeptical concerning those performed 
through the instrumentality of other evangelists. Especially 
is this skepticism true as applies to new systems of religion 
and the advocates thereof. 



AN EMINENT METHODIST. 



BISHOP FOWLER ON SPECIAL PROVIDENCES WITH 
EXAMPLES OF MIRACLES. 

Charles H. Fowler, D. D. LL.D., is one of the brightest men 
in the Methodist Episcopal Church, of which he is a bishop. 
When he was editor of the New York Christian Advocate, a 
sermon of his special providences was published in the ''Com- 
plete Preacher" for July, IS77. In that sermon Dr. Fowler 
said : 

It is just as much account to pray about the 
weather as it was when Elijah prayed about it. Here 
is a storm beating up the coast likely to drive every- 
thing to pieces. The Lord touches somewhere else in 
the universe some other element, gives it a little turn, 
and the storm veers off. All we need is to get hold of 
the great combiner. A Baptist preacher by the name of 
Edwards, who had been an old sea captain,* when a 
a tornado was coming straight down upon his house, 
knew that there was mischief in the cloud. He believed 
that God was at home in Wisconsin, and calling to his 
children said: "Do you see that cloud? That means 
harm. Let us go into the house and tell God about it." 
And they went in and prayed to the Lord that lie would 



„ The Edwards here is undoubtedly the person referred to elsewhere 
as having: been mysteriously supplied with groceries and fuel. 



c PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

take care of them if they were worth saving. They were 
saved and the next day and for months afterwards you 
could see the broad track of that tornado that cleaned 
up every blade of grass, every roof and hamlet, and 
tree and stick and stump in its path, bearing right 
down on this clergyman's house until it came within 
a quarter of a mile of it, when it made an abrupt turn, 
went to one side till opposite his house, then it turned 
back into its old path and went on. That man got hold 
of the great Combiner and the Lord looked after him. 

Dr. Fowler illustrated his idea by a hypothetical case. He 
supposed a pious man in deep meditation over whose path 
hung a tree that was liable to fall any moment. A sound ar- 
rests his footsteps in time to prevent him being under the tre« 
as it falls, 'and he is as much saved by the providence of God 
as he would have been if the Lord had come out and rolled up 
his sleeves and held up the tree before the eyes of men. 

He cited the case of a soldier who was moved by an irre- 
sistible impulse to get under cover while eating his lunch one 
day in front of Petersburg. He had hardly moved his head 
when a rebel bullet pierced the tree where it had rested. On 
this he comments: "He was saved as much as if the Lord had 
come down and turned aside that gun.'' 

He also recited the case of a ship's return to her home port 
after a three years' voyage and, as she was about to land her 
crew, a storm sent her upon the rocks, where she was pounded 
to pieces. A poor woman who had been to the shore to meet her 
son went home and spent the night in prayer. At daylight 



AN EMINENT METHODIST. „ 

that son burst into the room and cried: "I knew, mother, that 
you would pray me ashore." Upon this Fowler said: "She, 
too, got hold of the great Combiner. That is what I believe 
about Providence and about prayer, and the Bible is full of it 
from one end to the other." 

Dr. Fowler did not stop there. He told of Fletcher being 
saved to the church and to God by the act of a clumsy servant 
scalding him and thus preventing him going to sea as a lieu- 
tenant in the British navy in a ship that never came back. 



MIRACLES THAT ENTERTAIN. 

STORIES OF GOD'S -INTERVENTION IN AID OF THE 
STRIVERS AFTER VIRTUE. 

Rev. J. V. Watson, D. D., was a man who was deeply re- 
spected in the morning and until the noon of the present cen- 
tury, when he died. He entered the itinerant ministry of .the 
Methodist Episcopal Church during the second decade of the 
century and was for many years editor of the Northwestern 
Christian Advocate, in Chicago. After his death a book he had 
in preparation was published and, though all the articles it 
contains were not written by him, the author said the staple 
of the volume was from his pen and. as all of it was culled 
from the paper of which he was for ten years the editor, the 
miraculous incidents must be regarded as having the stamp of 
Methodist approval. 

The story w T ith which Dr. Watson opens his volume has 
for its chief incidents the inspiration of a young preacher and 
the resultant conversion of his scoffing brother. It was written 
by a woman whose name is not given, except as "Sister A." 
Elliott Ray is the young preacher who, on attempting to 
preach while his taunting brother sat facing him and ready to 
execute a. threat, failed for a moment. Then, knowing that his 
mother was at home praying for his success, he began by be- 
seeching those present to pray also and, through his mother's 
prayers, grew more and more eloquent until the whole congre- 



MIRACLES THAT ENTERTAIN. „ 

gat ion was profoundly moved, many to tears and the sneering 
brother Charles converted. 

The ninth story is by Sylvanus Cobb, probably not the 
author once so well known with the addition of ''junior" to 
his name, but his father, who was an honored clergyman. It 
tells of the almost miraculous reclamation of a besotted father 
who awoke from a half drunken sleep in a patch of woods and 
overheard his little daughter bewailing his degradation and 
contrasting it with his former loving kindness and provident 
care for them and discussing their mother's ardent prayers for 
his reform. It is a prettily written story and closes with the 
acknowledgment of the husband that his wife's prayers are 
answered. 

"The Unwelcome Preacher" contains a much more striking 
miracle story. It is an account of a Kentucky village that con- 
tained twenty-seven self-important Methodists, who, in 182S, 
asked for the most noted and popular preacher of the state as 
their pastor. The conference sent them a young man who 
had just been admitted to the conference and who was, in con- 
sequence, so very coldly received, that his heart would have 
failed him had not Bishop George accompanied him. 

The young man pleaded to have the appointment cancelled, 
but the bishop conducted him into a deep wood, where they 
both prayed for success. This helped the youth, because the 
bishop had fallen ill while they were on the journey to the 
station. The bishop, after failing to prevail upon the youth 
to try to cure him by prayer, resorted to supplication for him- 
self, and was healed. Here is miracle No. 1 of this story, 



ca PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

which is a mere incident of the narrative. After the prayer in 
the woods the bishop exacted a promise from the young man 
to follow this prescription: 

Go back to town; if you find a cross there bear it; 
diligently and lovingly perform every part of your 
duty; do the work of an evangelist; fast once a week, 
and spei:«d one hour of each day in special prayer that 
God may open your way in that community; do this for 
one month and at the end of that term, if you do not 
feel willing to stay, consider yourself released from 
the appointment. Can you do this? 

He thought he could, and the bishop left him and pursued 
his journey, leaving the half fainting youth to God and His 
mercy. Faithfully was the promise kept without sign of any 
change until the last Sunday of his probation. When he peeped 
out on the morning of that day the roads showed ''group after 
group of citizens flocking toward the Methodist church." The 
sight was naturally inspiring and the author of the story de- 
scribes the sermon as that of "a man sent from God" and 
gloriously baptized with the Holy Ghost and that his eye, 
hitherto confused and unsteady, "now kindled with a light 
that never shined on sea or shore.' " He adds: 

The power of the Highest was manifestly upon the 
audience and the presence of an ambassador of Christ 
was attested by sobs and groans from every part of the 
house. The preacher descended from the pulpit with- 
out pausing in his discourse, and invited to the place 
of prayer those who desired to flee the wrath to come. 



MIRACLES THAT ENTERTAIN. c - 

With loud cries for mercy, sinners came streaming 
down the aisle and before the congregation was dis- 
missed seven souls professed to find peace in believing. 
This was followed by a revival which for four weeks was 
so all-absorbing that little else received any attention. When 
the call was made for those who wished to join the church one 
hundred and eleven presented themselves. 

That village was made a permanent station and the author 
discloses in two brief paragraphs at the conclusion of his story 
that it is Russellville, Ky., and that the unwelcome preacher 
was then (in 1856) Rev. E. Stevenson, D. D., book agent, of the 
M. E. Church South. 

Dr. Watson did one praiseworthy act in getting out his 
book. He devoted a chapter to Newland Maffit and in It dis- 
plays sufficient Christian charity to touch lightly on the of- 
fenses charged on that gifted but erratic zealot and give him 
full credit for what of good was in him. 



ORTHODOX PRAYER CURE. 



A TEXT BOOK FOR METHODIST PREACHERS WHICH 
TEACHES MIRACULOUS HEALING. 
Rev. James Caughey, who is described as "an eminently 
successful revivalist" on the title page of a work with the 
lengthy title, "Helps to a Life of Holiness and Usefulness or 
Revival Miscellanies," contributes a striking bit of evidence 
in support of religion as a cure for disease. That his works 
must be regarded as authority, I accept as evidence that the 
matter in the volume from which I shall quote was "selected" 
by Rev. Ralph W. Allen and Rev. Daniel Wise and was cf the 
forty-second thousand. On page 345 of this work Mr. Caughey 
speaks of an "in genius Dr. C." thus: 

Dr. C. reckons all gloomy wrong-headedness and 
spurious free-thinking as so many symptoms of bodily 
disease and, I think, says: "The human organs in 
some nervous distempers may, perhaps, be rendered 
fit for tne actuatim of demon?" and advises religion 
as an excellent remedy. 

In a chapter devoted to answers to prayer two pages, 401 
and 402, are devoted especially to the subject. The writer 
quotes a. simile employed by others who had spoken and writ- 
ten before him, which likened the petitioner to a man in a boat 
who grappled a ship. The ship did not yield to him but towed 
the boat with it. Of this Mr. Caughey says: 



ORTHODOX PRAYER CURE. .7 

I do not like the idea, however ingeniously carried 
out, that God is as stationary, with regard to the 
returning sinner or praying believer, as the ship to the 
boatman. It seems to make against the analogy of the 
Scripture, "Draw nigh to God and He will draw nigh 
to you. James, iv:8. This seems like a proposal to 
meet us half way, and if we take the example of the 
prodigal son, as illustrative of the willingness of God 
to receive returning sinners, our Heavenly Father per- 
forms the largest part. The prodigal did not run to 
meet his father but his father ran to meet the repent- 
ing son, "and fell upon his neck and kissed him." 

In a chapter devoted to preaching the author tells a story 
that would have fitted well into that from which the foregoing 
extract was taken. It is in brief that a young minister named 
Stoddard, at Northhampton, Mass., whose congregation be- 
came convinced that he had never been converted because, 
though he was learned and devoted to his work, his preaching 
did not appeal to them. After a conference they decided to 
hold a meeting at which to pray for his conversion. The pas- 
tor, surprised at a gathering of which he had no notice, in- 
quired the cause of one whom he saw going to the church. 
When informed he retired and prayed for himself. Mr. Caughey 
says: 

While they were yet speaking, God answered and 
set His soul at liberty. It was not long before the peo- 
ple of God obtained evidence, most unquestionable, that 
he had indeed passed "from death unto life." That 



58 



PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 



man labored among them nearly half a century, and, 
it is said, he was ranked among the most able minis- 
ters of the age. 

That Caughey's works are soundly orthodox is evident 
from the preface, a note which says that after 10,000 copies had 
been sold in about a year, the plates were purchased by the 
book agents of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, by 
whom the book was afterwards published. 



COMMUNED WITH GOD. 



REVIVALIST CAUGHEY'S ACCOUNT OF HIS FAILURE 

TO MARRY. 

Rev. James Caughey, who is mentioned elsewhere in this 
volume, as the author of "Revival Miscellanies," was one of 
the early Methodist preachers in the United. States, having been 
ordained deacon in 1834 at the annual conference in Troy, N. 
Y. In a biographical sketch in "Earnest Christianity' ' his 
words are Quoted concerning his communion with God. For 
the sake of saving space I reduce them to their essence, but 
those who wish to verify my work or dispute it will find the 
matter on pages 12 to 15 of the work named, which was edited 
by Rev. Daniel Wise and Rev. Ralph W. Allen. 

In 1839 Mr. Caughey was appointed to Whitehall, N. Y., 
and began to reflect on taking a wife. Immediately his heart 
became hard and "the Lord seemed to depart from" him. The 
more he reflected on the subject the further the Lord seemed 
to withdraw from him. He says: 

God, who had honored me with such intimate 
communion with Himself since my conversion, appar- 
ently left me to battle it out alone. I was about to step 
out of the order of His providence and He was re- 
solved to prevent it unless I should refuse to under- 
stand why He thus resisted me. Had l continued the 
conflict I believe He would have let me take my own 



6q PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

course, nor would He have cast me off, yet I solemnly 

feel He would have severely chastised my disobedience. 

While in this state of mind Caughey resorted to fervent 

and long continued prayer for relief from the weight that op* 

pressed him and light as to what he should do, determined to 

obey the divine command. He says: 

During three days I cried to God without any an- 
swer. On the third day in the afternoon I obtained an 
audience with the Lord. The place was almost as still 
as Sinai * * * I left the place without receiving 
any light, but my heart was fully softened and subdued 
and I felt sure I had prevailed in some way with God. 
I was confident light and direction were coming. 

On the same evening (July 9, 1839) a light reached him and 
he gives the following as a feeble attempt to reproduce the 
form in which the divine will was communicated to him: 

These matters that trouble thee must be let en- 
tirely alone. The will of God is that thou shouldst 
visit Europe. He shall be with thee there and 
give thee many seals to thy ministry- He has 
provided thee with funds. Make thy arrangements 
accordingly; and next conference ask liberally from 
the proper authorities and it shall be granted thee. 
The message also contained some directions how to pro- 
ceed, and Caughey says it came in a way that left no room for 
doubt. Throughout the page he tells of the heavenly feelings 
it left with him, of joy, of rest, of peace, and he exclaims: 



COMMUNED WITH GOD. 



61 



Oh the sweetness of that communication I then en- 
joyed with God. 

The next day he unpacked his books, set his study in order 
and proceeded to fulfill his pastoral mission and prepare for 
his coming voyage. The meaning of the expression: "He has 
provided thee with funds," is explained by saying he had a 
few hundred dollars, the propriety of accumulating which he 
had long doubted, but this revelation had cleared his conscience 
and "the meaning of many past providences was now ex- 
plained." _- — 
In pursuance of the Divine will Caughey obtained leave 
from the conference; went through Canada as commanded and 
converted about four hundred persons. Comparatively little 
is said in the sketch of his work in England, but he created a 
profound sensation in Dublin, whither he went unannounced. 
In the seven years of his stay in Ireland and England 22,000 
persons professed conversion under his labors. 

The body of the work consists of extracts from Caughey's 
journal. In it can be found many incidents of a miraculous 
character, but to reproduce them, even in the most abbreviated 
form, would occupy space unprofitably. They would simply 
become cumulative evidence of Methodist belief in miracles, 
which is abundantly proved without them. 



Evidence of 
Baptists. 



BAPTIST TESTIMONY. 



FATHERS OF THAT DENOMINATION RELATE THE 
WORKING OF MIRACLES. 

The history of the Baptist Church shows that its organiza- 
tion in Holland was miraculous. J. M. Cramp, D. D;, in "Bap- 
tist History," 5 a work published in London in 1871, quotes from 
Menno Simon's "Narrative of His Secession From Popery" 
how he was called upon, about 1535, by several Anabaptists 
who besought him to become their pastor. He did not deem 
himself qualified because, though he had been several years a 
Catholic priest, he was not sufficiently familiar with the Scrip- 
tures. His callers were urgent, however, and he says: 

At length, after much prayer, I resigned myself to 
the Lord and His people with this condition: They 
were to unite with me in praying to Him fervently, 
that, should it be His holy pleasure to employ me in 
His service to His praise, His fatherly kindness would 
then give me such a heart and mind as would testify 
to me with Paul. "Woe is me if I preach not the Gos- 
pel," but should His -will be otherwise, that He would 
order such means as to permit the matter to rest where 
it was. 

In support of this course he quotes Matt, xviii: 19,20. It 
is left to be inferred that the Lord gave Menno the sign he 
sought, for he became the great leader, and Mossheim says he 



BAPTIST TESTIMONY. 



65 



became "almost the common father and bishop of all the 
Anabaptists." 

Menno has given a name to one sect of Baptists who are 
widely scattered over Europe and have large settlements in the 
northwestern States of America. They are known as Mennon- 
ites, and those who have settled in the United States are 
largely emigrants who fled from Russia on the withdrawal of 
the exemption from military service. They are essentially 
Germans, their forefathers having left the fatherland on ac- 
count of oppression and induced by the Czar's promise oT~per- 
petual exemption from military duty. 

A TRAITOR STRICKEN DUMB. 

Menno's success in Holland attracted the attention of the 
authorities, who persecuted the Baptists and offered a reward 
for the apprehension of Menno. A traitor agreed, for a reward, 
to cause the arrest of the apostle at a meeting, but he escaped. 
Soon afterward Menno, in a boat, passed the traitor and the 
officers who sought him, on the canal, but the traitor was un- 
able to speak and betray him. When Menno had escaped to 
the bank the traitor's tongue was loosened and he cried out 
that the bird had flown. The officers were so incensed that 
they, disregarding his plea that his tongue had been bound, 
caused him to be severely punished. 

A MINISTER HEALED. 

In 1638 Hanserd Knollys, an ordained minister who had 
abandoned the Church of England after preaching several 
years, emigrated to New England. He was not allowed to re- 
main in Boston because he was suspected not to be an orthodox 



66 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

Puritan and he returned to London late in 1640 and sustained 
himself by teaching while preaching to the Baptists gratuitous- 
ly. While in America he sojourned at Dover a&d it is presum- 
ably at that place that he was healed of a grave ailment by 
prayer. Knollys' account of his illness and recovery is this: 

Two learned, well-practiced and judicious doctors 
of physic had daily visited me and consulted several 
days together, and I was fully persuaded that they did 
what they possibly could to effect a cure and knew also 
that God did not succeed their honest and faithful en- 
deavors with His blessing. Although God had given a 
signal and singular testimony of His special blessing by 
each of them unto other of their patients, at least six- 
teen, at the same time, I resolved to take no more 
physic, but would apply to that holy ordinance of God, 
appointed by Jesus Christ, the great physician of value, 
in James v: 14,15: "Is any sick among you let them 
call the elders of the church and let them pray over 
him, annointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; 
and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the 
Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins 
they shall be forgiven him," — and I sent for Mr. Kiffin 
and Mr. Vavasor Powell, who prayed over me and an- 
nointed me with oil in the name of the Lord. The Lord 
did hea,r prayer and heal me; for there were many 
Godly ministers and gracious saints that prayed 
day and night for me (with submission to the will of 
God) that the Lord would spare my life and make me 



BAPTIST TESTIMONY. 



67 



more serviceable to His church and to His saints, whose 
prayers God heard; and as an answer to their prayers 
I was perfectly healed but remained weak long after. 
The cautious historian in quoting this account of the an- 
cient belief in the power of prayer in healing illness, says: "We 
copy it without comment," but the miraculous escape of Menno 
through the informer being deprived of the power of speech, 
and the Divine evidence of his fitness to become a pastor, was 
given without the saving clause. 

In reviewing his own history some years before his^death, 
Mr. Knollys, who had acquired considerable property after his 
return to England, wrote: 

Thus my Heavenly Father made up my former 
losses with His future blessings, even in outward sub- 
stance, besides a good increase of grace and experi- 
ence, in the space of the forty years that I and my 
dear faithful wife lived together. 

Mr. Knollys died in his ninety-third year and so much was 
he venerated by Baptists that in 1845 the "Hanserd Knollys 
Society" was formed for the republication of the works of 
early Baptist authors. He was among the first three minis- 
ters of his denomination in England who were "honored while 
living and whose memory is blessed." 

HE HEALS ANOTHER PREACHER. 
Knollys' faith in the power of prayer to heal was not con- 
fined in its operative effect to himself. The history from which 
I quote says, on page 389, that Benjamin Keach, another of the 
three immortals mentioned above, who was of a weak consti- 



68 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

tution, was so ill in 1689 that his life was despaired of. 

His physicians had exhausted their skill and his 
relatives took leave of him, expecting his departure to 
be near at hand, when, as Crosby relates, "The Rev- 
erend Mr. Hanserd Knollys, seeing his friend and 
brother near to all appearances expiring, betook him- 
self to prayer, and, in an earnest and very extraordin- 
ary manner, begged that God would spare him and add 
unto his days the time granted unto His servant Heze- 
kiah. As soon as he had ended his prayer he said: 
"Brother Keach, I shall be in Heaven before you" and 
quickly left him. So remarkable was the answer of God 
to this good man's prayer, that I cannot omit it; though 
it may be discredited by some, there are yet living in- 
contestable evidences of the fact; — for Mr. Keach re- 
covered of that illness and lived just fifteen years after- 
wards; and then it pleased God to visit him with that 
short sickness which put an end to his life." He died 
July 18, 1704, in the sixty-fourth year of his age. 

William Kiffin, the third of the trio, wrote his own memoirs 
from which Cramp copies copiously. He does not recount any 
remarkable miracles, but all through the extract copied by 
Cramp there are acknowledgments that God guided and pro- 
tected him in the exercise of his religious duties as a minister, 
teacher and exemplar of the faith. 

A REVIVALIST'S MIRACLES. 
When I began this work I had little idea that I should find 
so much material from non-Catholic authorities. Before hav- 



BAPTIST TESTIMONY. g 

ing made any researches- 1 had almost accepted the dicta of my 
Protestant friends and those authorities whose works I had 
casually examined, that Protestants agreed that the age of 
miracles had passed and that God did not now interpose in- 
human affairs because it was not necessary where His word 
was before mankind to read, learn and believe. I had heard 
revivalists tell of wonderful things that had happened to them 
but didn't recall them. One of these stories will serve as a 
fair sample. A Baptist preacher who was widely known-4n the 
"early fifties"" as Sailor Edwards said in one of his discourses 
in Detroit, Mich., Lhat God had commanded him to go forth 
and rouse a dying people to their danger of everlasting pun- 
ishment. His wife, of less faith than he, told him he would do 
better to earn something to eat and something to cook it with. 
He hearkened to God, rather than to his wife, and though his 
larder — or what stood in its stead — was empty, he obeyed the 
command. He learned on his return from his revival tour 
that he had not been gone an hour when a wagon was driven 
to his home with ample provisions and was soon followed by 
a load of stove-wood. He declared that the Lord sent the pro- 
visions and fuel and that he had never discovered the human 
agency employed by the giver of all good. If this miracle was 
ever disputed I never heard of it. Edwards' home, if my mem- 
ory serves me correctly, was then at or near Laporte, Indiana, 
which was, at the time when Edwards flourished, but little 
less easy to reach than now, and if he did not speak the truth 
he could easily have been refuted had any cared to make in- 
vestigation, but I never heard of any being made. In the arti- 



j PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

cle on Bishop Fowler of the M. E, Ch'urch, elsewhere in this 
volume, will be found another miracle that saved Edwards' 
home and family from destruction. 

Any person who reads the life or sermons of Spurgeon, 
the eminent Baptist preacher of London, must conclude that 
he believed in miracles. His story of the building of the taber- 
nacle and of the Stock well orphanage plainly indicate the be- 
lief in Divine interposition in aid of both those great and 
laudable enterprises. 

ROGER WILLIAMS' TESTIMONY. 

Roger Williams, who settled Rhode Island, after being 
expelled from Massachusetts by the Puritans, bears testimony 
to the reality of miracles. On that terrible winter night when 
he was warned to leave the Puritan colony and was refused 
even the privilege of awaiting the abatement of the storm, a 
mysterious messenger called on him; gave him minute direc- 
tions how and whence to proceed. The pious pioneer Baptist 
followed the directions thus mysteriously given with unfalter- 
ing faith that God had sent the unknown, unrecognized 
stranger. Even when the howling of wolves in the wilder- 
ness was such as would have terrified one less steadfast, the 
outcast Baptist remembered that he was under the protection 
of God who saved Daniel from the lions and he quailed not. 

The history of Roger Williams, his rebukes of what he 
deemed Puritan sins, his expulsion from Massachusetts and his 
founding the Baptist colony in Rhode Island, are too well 
known to need citations of authorities here. 



SPURGEON ON PRAYER. 



THE EMINENT PREACHER GIVES REASONS FOR BE- 
LIEVING IT IS ANSWERED. 

Spurgeon. the phenomenal preacher of London, was a firm 
believer in the power of prayer and that God answered prayers. 
In one of his "Sermon Notes" (Vol. II, page 162) he says the 
Lord will answer prayer because: 

1. He has appointed prayer and made arrange- 
ments for its presentation and acceptance. He could 
not have meant it to be a mere farce: that were to 
treat us as fools. 

2. He prompts, encourages and quickens prayer; 
and surely He would never mock us by exciting de- 
sires which He never meant to gratify. Such a thought 
well nigh blasphemes the Holy Ghost who indites 
prayer in the heart. 

Spurgeon gives three other reasons that are scarcely less 
forcible, the third of which is. "He has already answered 
many of his people and ourselves also.' 1 In fortifying his posi- 
tion he comments on an illustration: "If true prayer is not 
answered the nature of God must have changed." In support 
of his position he quotes from Trapp, Thomas Brooks and 
Harrington Evans. 

One cannot read Spurgeon' s four volumes of "Sermon 



y 2 PEOTESTANT MIRACLES. 

Notes" without being convinced that the author believed that 
God intervened in human affairs as much as He ever did in an- 
swer to prayer and to promote the cause of piety and justice, 
but the word "miracles" is avoided while miraculous interven- 
tion is taught. 



College Professors' 
Teachings,, 



UNION SEMINARY. 



SOME VIEWS FROM THE DIVINITY SCHOOL OF THE 
PRESBYTERIANS. 

The Religious Encyclopaedia, edited by Philip Schaff, D. 
D. LL.D., professor in Union Theological Seminary in New 
York, with Rev. Samuel M. Jackson and Rev. D. S. Schaff as as- 
sociate editors, ought to be accepted as good orthodox authori- 
ty. It devotes a large amount of space to miracles. In one arti- 
cle by F. Godet occur these passages: 

There is an objection often made to the miracles of 
Bible history, that none are wrought now. * * * 

The alleged decrease in the series of miracles is ab- 
solutely false. 

These passages are widely separated, but they apply to the 
same subject or they have no application. 

Julius Kostlin follows Godet in an article on the historical 
view of miracles, in which he says Luther regarded them as 
angelic ministrations and set no limits on the agency, yet be- 
lieved that since Christ came they were not necessary, but he 
makes no mention of Luther's belief in the supernatural to the 
extent of causing him to dash a bottle of ink at the devil, who, 
he said, appeared in his study. The ink mark on the wall was 
long an object of half -worship by tourists in Germany, who 
deemed a tour of Europe incomplete if they did not see the 



UNION SEMINARY. y- 

splash. After describing the views of several theologians and 
philosophers on the subject, Kostlin says: 

Btit in truth there are miracles which cannot be 
explained upon ground of laws inherent in nature. 
They are only explicable on the supposition of Divine 
direct action upon nature. 

* ♦ ♦ 

Before the last word can be spoken upon miracles 
some definite idea must be attached to the phrase 
"laws of nature." It will require a more comprehen- 
sive treatment of the subject than the scientists are in- 
clined to give it, for much more than material nature 
must be studied. 



CURES AND CONVERSIONS. 



DR. BRUCE DEPENDS MODERN MIRACLES IN TWO 

COLLEGES. 

A. M. Bruce, D. D., and professor of apologetics in the Free 
Church College of Glasgow, Scotland, published in 1893 a vol- 
ume entitled, "The Miraculous Element in the Gospels." On 
page 316 he begins the consideration of modern miracles thus: 
How has it come to pass that the whole Christian 
people, speaking broadly, has allowed the healing of 
the body to fall into abeyance in comparison with the 
saving of the soul? 

He then says some now think that if the church lived up 
to Christ's teachings cures would be as common now as con- 
versions. He cites Matt, viii :17; Mark xvi :17 and 18, which 
some hold to be an unrestricted promise to believers in all 
ages and says (page 317) that the possibility of supernatural 
cures in answer to prayer is believed by all who pray, and con- 
tinues : 

Neither is it a question as to the reality of alleged 
faith cures, whether of the present or any past time. 
A Christian man has no interest in obstinately denying 
their reality. On the contrary, he can only hope that 
all cases of the kind are as the most enthusiastic ad- 



CURES AND CONVERSIONS. 7 y 

vocates of modern miracles could desire, and devotedly 
wish that their number were greatly multiplied. 
Dr. Bruce then relates what misery he witnessed during 
his apprenticeship as a preacher in Scotland when he longed 
for the healing power of the apostles. Notwithstanding these 
declarations Dr. Bruce thinks the church should not put 
healing on a level with the pardon of sin because "it unduly 
magnifies the benefit of mere physical health." - 

Lest the orthodox skeptic concerning what is termed 
miraculous healing may regard Dr. Bruce as less than full 
orthodox, it is well to explain, as he does, that his book is a 
series of lectures prepared at the invitation of Union Theo- 
logical Seminary of New York, in 1886. In these lectures one 
is devoted to "Miracles in Relation to the Order of Nature." 
In this he defends miracles and treats as flimsy the opinions of 
those who regard them as being in conformity with "higher 
law" or "unknown law," which he treats as substantially the 
same thing, or perhaps it would be more descriptive to say, 
"unsubstantially the same nothing." Dr. Bruce quotes from 
Matthew Arnold's "Literature and Dogma" thus: 
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ENDORSED. 
Medical science has never gauged, perhaps never 
enough set itself to gauge the intimate connection be- 
tween moral fault and disease. To what extent or in 
how many cases what is called illness is due to moral 
springs having been used amiss, whether by being 
over-used or by not being used sufficiently, we hardly 
at all enquire and we too little know. Certainly it is 



7« 



PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 



due to this very much more than we commonly think, 
and the more it is due to this the more do moral thera- 
peutics rise in possibility and importance. 
Thereupon Dr. Bruce comments: 

On this view it is conceivable that medical science 
may, yet penetrate the secret of Christ's healing minis- 
try, just as it is possible, and we may hope probable, 
that the causes and cures of such fatal disease as chol- 
era and consumption will yet be discovered. When that 
day comes moral therapeutics will be a recognized 
branch of medical art and many of the evangelical 
''miracles" of healing will be miracles no longer, but 
natural cures. 

After further reasoning to the same effect this learned 
divine treats of modern instances of apparent miracles and 
says they are not be taken for granted nor scornfully denied. 

Some of the hypotheses advanced by skeptics and so-called 
liberal Christians to account for miraculous occurrences by 
physical laws, or on other grounds than those of what are 
called supernatural theories, are amusing. One of these, which 
Dr. Bruce notices, is by Paulus, a theological writer. It goes 
beyond the absurd and attributes deceit to the Savior. It is 
that Jesus, desiring to make a present to the bridal couple at 
Cana, Galilee, gave them wine and made them believe he had 
changed it from water, taking advantage of the company as 
"na fu r but just had plenty." Others have attributed to Jesus 
hypnotic powers of such extent as to make the whole bridal 
company drink water and believe it to be superior wine. 



VIEWS FROM YALE. 



PROFESSORS FISHER AND HARRIS BELIEVE IN MIRA- 
CLES AS REALITIES. 

George P. Fisher, professor r* church history in Yale Uni- 
versity, is the author of a work entitled, "Supernatural Origin 
of Christianity," published in 1887. He devotes a chapter of 
fourteen pages to Christian miracles and argues the reason- 
ableness of belief in all except those classed as Catholic. By a 
course of reasoning, that he fails to see is as forcible against 
all belief in miracles as against any, seems to satisfy himself 
that there was no necessity for the Catholic miracles and hence 
that they were not real. 

Fisher does not seem to have remained fixed in this opin- 
ion. In his other work, "Grounds of Theistic and Religious 
Belief," page 291, he evinces a belief in the power of prayer to 
heal sickness. He says: 

The restoration of the sick in response to prayer 
is commonly through no visible or demonstrable in- 
terference with natural law. Yet no one would be 
charged with incredulity for holding that, in certain 
exceptional instances, the supernatural agency discov- 
ers itself by evidence palpable to the senses. So dis- 
creet an historian as Neander will not deny that St. 



g Q PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

Bernard may have been the instrument of effecting 
cures properly miraculous. 

Dr. Fisher quotes Edmund Burke's opinion that in the in- 
troduction of Christianity into Britain, by Augustine and his 
associates, that Providence might have directly interfered for 
an end so worthy*. He also quotes thus from F. D. Maurice: 

I should think it very presumptuous to say that it 
has never been needful, in the modern history of the 
world, to break the idols of sense and experience by 
the same method which was sanctioned in the days of 
old. 

Dr. Fisher makes it plain that he is not credulous on the 
subject of answers to prayer. On page 292 he says the most 
that can be said of miracles in post-apostolic ages is that some- 
times they have occurred in answer to prayer and he italicizes 
''sometimes.'' 

PROFESSOR HARRIS A BELIEVER. 

The Philosophic Basis of Theism is a work by Samuel Har- 
ris, D. D., LL.D,, professor of systematic theology in the Yale 
University, published in 1888. In this the author, pp. 65 to 72, 
controverts Hume's assertion that a miracle is incredible be- 
cause contrary to universal experience. Dr. Harris' reasoning 
is very close, analytical and exhaustive, and his conclusion is 
that Hume's position is illogical, but the professor does not 
carry his argument so far as to apply it to any class of mira- 
cles. For this reason I assume that it applies as well to mod- 
ern as to ancient mysteries. 



VIEWS FROM YALE. 



81 



A VENERABLE YALE MAN. 
The venerable Noah Porter, who was for many years a 
member of the faculty of Yale University, published a volume 
entitled, "Fifteen Years in the Chapel of Yale College." In that 
volume is a sermon in which he advises the graduating class 
of 1881, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God." In the closing 
words of the sermon he says God "never fails to give success 
co the man that seeks first whatsoever is true; whatsoever is 
honorable; whatsoever is lovely; whatsoever is of good report." 

AN AMERICAN WAR MIRACLE. 
The venerable Timothy Dwight, once president of Yale and 
for many years tutor and professor in that college, in his lec- 
tures on theology teaches that blessings are often given in an- 
swer to prayer. If he knew of no other, he says: 

The blessings communicated to this country would 
furnish ample satisfaction concerning this subject to 
every sober, much more, to every pious inhabitant of 
This country. Among these the destruction of the 
French armament under the Duke D'Auville in the year 
1746, ought to be remembered with gratitude and ad- 
miration. * * * This fleet consisted of forty ships of 
war; was destined for the destruction of New England; 
was of sufficient force to render that destruction, in the 
ordinary progress of things, certain; sailed from Che- 
bucto, in Nova Scotia, for this purpose, and was entire- 
ly destroyed on the night following a general fast 
throughout New England by a terrible tempest. Im- 



82 



PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 



pious men, who regard not the work of the Lord, nor 
the operation of His hands, and who for that reason 
are finally destroyed, may refuse to give God the glory 
of this most merciful interposition. But our ances- 
tors had, and it is hoped their descendants ever will 
have, both piety and good sense, sufficient to ascribe to 
Jehova the greatness and the power, and the victory, 
and the majesty; and to bless the God of Israel forever 
and ever. 

The Scriptures put this subject out of doubt by de- 
claring directly, that blessings are given to mankind 
in answer to prayer. 

President DwigLt then proceeds to explain that prayer does 
not change the intentions of the deity or that prayer deserves 
to be granted, but that "without prayer the blessings would 
never be obtained." 

This ascribes to God all power, but many of those who 
profess the same religion as President Dwight, while admit- 
ting that his teachings are correct, would deny that God could 
or would relieve suffering humanity of so much as a toothache, 
however sincerely the sufferer might pray. 



DISCREDITS HIMSELF. 



WHITE, THE PHILOSOPHER, EDUCATOR AND DIPLOMAT, 
PERPETUATES ABSURDITIES. 

Andrew D. White, former president of Cornell University, 
present ambassador near the imperial German Court^Jn the 
Popular Science Monthly of May, 1891, discredits miracles in 
an article that is largely devoted to Xavier, who is more gen- 
erally known as St. Francis Xavier. W T hite says, after illustra- 
ting how miracle stories grow, that testimony which would now 
he laughed at by a school-boy, "was until a comparatively re- 
cent period, accepted by the leaders of thought." After exerting 
his powers of logic to aesiroy all belief in miracles the eminent 
educator, philosopher and diplomat thus betrays "that he does 
not fully concur in his own opinion: 

It should be especially kept in mind that, while the 
vast majority of these — (miracle stories) — were doubt- 
less due to the myth-making faculty and to that devel- 
opment of legends which always goes on in ages igno- 
rant of the relation, physical cause and effect, some of 
the miracles of healing may have had some basis of 
fact 

The learned gentleman seems not to perceive that this ad- 
mission estops him from further arguing against the reality of 
what are called miracles, and he continues his effort to put 



8 4 



PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 



limits on the omnipotent or even on the operation of laws 
of which even he is ignorant, and at the same time to admit the 
reality of some miracles, in these words: 

We of modern times have seen too many cures per- 
formed through influences exercised on the imagina- 
tion, such as those of the Jansenites at the cemetery of 
Medard; of the Ultramontanes at Le Sallet and Lourdes 
and of various Protestant sects — at Old Orchard and. 
elsewhere, as well as at sundry camp-meetings, to 
doubt that some cures, more or less permanent, were 
wrought by sainted personages in the early cnurch 
and throughout the middle ages. 

One is prompted to ask where the learned gentleman would 
draw the line of the limit upon the power of the Almighty to 
operate laws of His own making, the effect and even the ex- 
istence of which President White has not been able to trace. 
If such cures could be effected by saintly or sainted personages 
in the early church, the power must be extinct or saintly per- 
sonages must be able to exercise it now. If the power ever 
existed it was a Divine power and must exist still, or if the 
learned philosopher imagines it to be extinct it would follow 
that God must have lost some of His power. Is this what these 
learned men mean when they attempt to draw the line or 
trocha, chronologically or geographically, beyond which mira- 
cles shall not pass? 

The purpose of Dr. White's paper is to discredit all who 
pretend to heal disease by any other agency than that of drugs 



DISCREDITS HIMSELF. 



85 



or the surgeon's instruments. He quotes freely from Saints 
Cyril, Ambrose and Augustine to the effect that "the precepts 
of medicine are contrary to celestial science, watching and 
prayer" and says this doctrine was reiterated from time to time 
throughout the middle ages. 

This shows pretty well for Christian Science as a return to 
the faith and practice of the Christians of the 
days when Christianity was practiced for its in- 
trinsic virtue. truth and its benefit to humanity. 
That Dr. White's object is to protect medical practice is further 
evinced by an article in the succeeding number of the same 
magazine on the absurd idea that the touch of royal personages 
cured scrofula and epilepsy. As if to emphasize his contempt 
for his own opinion that his other opinion was subject to 
doubt and exception, he says: 

There are no miracles of healing in the history of - ■ 
the human race more thoroughly attested than those 
wrought by the touch of Henry VIII, Elizabeth, the 
Stuarts and especially that chosen vessel, Charles II. 
These were not all despised Catholic miracles with which 
White contradicts himself, but he cites others performed in 
France which were by Catholic monarchs. He also cites other 
English Protestant cases and then repeats his doubts of him- 
self by quoting from Collier's Ecclesiastical History, that to 
despise these cases ' c is to come to the extreme of skepticism, to 
deny our senses and be incredulous even to ridiculousness." 

Notwithstanding the absurd appearance this gives to Prof. 
White's papers, they are grave in tone and his contradictory 



85 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

positions are sufficiently wide-separated for the inconsisten- 
cies to escape the notice of a reader who is not critical. 

In a note to his chapter on "Miracles and Medicine," when 
republished in book form, in 1896, President White relates that 
on his arrival in St. Petersburg in 1893, to take up his official 
residence as minister, he heard much of the stories of Father 
Ivan's miracles. He relates two of these only to follow them 
by a complete and satisfactory refutation, but also quotes the 
witness by whom he refutes the two stories as saying that Ivan 
had done wonders in healing the sick and relieving distress. 
Upon this White says it was made evident that Ivan is a 
saintlike man. 

Professor John Fiske of Harvard in his book, the "Unseen 
World," in discussing the errors of scientists in dealing with 
mystic subjects, says, page 129: "Most scientific and philo- 
sophical works have their defects." This remark of the 
learned educator would apply with peculiar force to that other 
eminent educator and diplomat, Andrew D. White. 



A GERMAN PROFESSOR. 



DR. CHRISTLIEB OF BONN UNIVERSITY ON MODERN 

MIRACLES. 
Among these orthodox theologians who dissent from the 
prevailing opinion or the opinion that is most frequently 
found recorded in books, is Dr. Theodore Christlieb, professor 
of theology and university preacher at Bonn, Germany, who 
was for some years pastor of an orthodox German congrega- 
tion in London. He delivered a series of lectures, some of 
them in London on the subject of miracles and these were pub- 
lished in book form in 1874 under the title: "Modern Doubt 
and Christian Belief." The first four lectures are devoted to 
the miraculous origin of Christianity and the fifth to "Modern 
Negation of Miracles." He devotes a short space to describ- 
ing that negation and says those united thereon are so: 

Because with the truth of miracles the entire cita- 
del of Christianity stands or fails. For its beginning 
is a miracle; its Author is a miracle; its progress de- 
pends upon miracles and they will hereafter be its 
consummation. 

A little further along, he says: "The negation of miracles 
leads to the annihilation, not merely of the Christian faith, but 
of all religion. Upon these postulates the learned theologian 
bases a long argument that is not within the purview of this 
work, but he quotes Beyschlag. a contemporary, to the effect 



gg PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

that one who denies miracles beseeches God in vain for the re- 
covery of a loved child whom He would have healed of illness, 
and more to the same effect. Dr. Christlieb gives several 
definitions of miracles, one of which is: Supernatural phe- 
nomena, between which and miracles for affirmation of faith, 
many other orthodox authorities try to draw sharp distinc- 
tions. 

In tracing the negation of miracles he says their possibili- 
ty has been doubted for the past 200 years. This seems to 
imply that belief in them was the rule before in earlier times. 
He then reviews the positions of the English and German 
schools of denial, the fears of some churchmen that they foster 
superstition and asks his hearers to compare Gospel miracles 
with those of the "Romish and Oriental" churches. On pages 
305-7 appear these very positive declarations: 

And do not a multitude of analogies go to show 
that God can interfere supernaturally at any time in 
all natural existence? 

The man who endeavors to make the laws of nat- 
ure a ground of proof against miracles, simply begs the 
question, for he always presupposes what he desires to 
prove. 

Regarding apostolic miracles later than the second century 
Christlieb cites Tertullian, Origen and Theodore of Mopsueste 
as witnesses of their performance as late as the year 429. 
Theodore is thus quoted: 

Many heathen among us have been healed * * * 
so abundant are miracles in our midst. 



A GERMAN PROFESSOR. 



8 9 



After relating the miracles wrought by Hans Egede in 
Greenland and others mentioned in that connection elsewhere 
in this work, Christlieb adds the escape of the missionary ship 
Harmony off the coast of Labrador. An iceberg bore down 
upon the vessel which was unable to avoid it but when within 
one foot of the ship and when it seemed inevitable that it 
must be crushed by the mountain of ice and all on board lost, 
the iceberg suddenly stopped and then drifted away. He also 
refers to Luther healing Melancthon and gives an account of 
the restoration of a girl who had been paralyzed twenty^ears 
in South Germany, but is not specific enough to make the case 
valuable except to say that the healing was publicly certified 
as a miracle. Toward the close of the chapter occur these 
significant passages: 

Most of us are aware that wonderful things are 

related of the healing of the sick in the present day. 

Yet these are but weak analogies of that divine power 

of healing in the New Testament history. 

In a note on page 335 Spurgeon, the great preacher, is 
quoted as calling certain German preachers "modern workers 
of miracles." To his own question regarding miracles: "Do 
they still occur,' " Dr. Christlieb devotes nine pages of his work. 
The answer is affirmative and he closes the chapter with the 
words: "With God nothing shall be impossible." 



MARVELOUS VISIONS. 



A HARVARD PROFESSOR RELATES MANY ASTONISHING 
CASES OF SUPERNATURAL SIGHT. 

Dr. Edward Hammond Clarke, a physician of Boston who, 
according to Oliver Wendell Holmes, the poet physician, was. 
at the head of his profession for many years, was the author 
of a work of 315. pages devoted to visions. The introduction 
was written by Dr. Holmes, who endorses three of the marvel- 
ous cases as those of which he had some personal knowledge. 
The "essay," as Holmes calls it, was written while Dr. Clarke 
believed himself to be slowly dying of an internal consuming 
disease, for which his profession afforded no remedy. His 
death in 1877 confirmed the belief, and his book was published 
the following year. 

Dr. Holmes says Clarke originally intended to follow his 
father's profession — the ministry — and it is evident from what 
is said of him and his parents that Dr. Clarke was "orthodox" 
as that term is understood in New England. The miraculous 
character of some of the instances related in the work may 
therefore be construed as orthodox endorsement of an active 
belief in the miraculous of the present. In the initiatory 
chapter of his work, Dr. Clarke treats of the many and various 
phases and varieties of visions and of the persons who relate 
them from those whom the Christian world recognizes as 



MARVELOUS VISIONS. QI 

prophets, down to the delirium tremens patients. After mor- 
alizing on the incredulity of people generally and the indiffer- 
ence of many to the marvelous, he says: 

The persistence with which the truthfulness of the 
visions has been affirmed, at all times, everywhere, and 
by such a variety of individuals, is of itself a significant 
fact, and one that deserves consideration. It implies 
that below the nonsense, charlatanism, fanaticism, ig- 
norance and mystery, upon which visions are largely 
built up, there is somewhere a substratum of truth7~Tf 
we could only get at it. Such a growth could never 
have appeared, nor would it continue to appear, if its 
roots did not draw their nutriment from something 
more invigorating than fancy or deception. It must 
be admitted, moreover, that the question of the possible 
occurrence of visions is one of great interest and im- 
portance. Its interest lies in its intimate connection 
with the attractive and a shadowy territory — the terra 
incognita and debatable ground — which stretches be- 
tween the body and mind, and which connects this 
world with the next. Its importance lies in the fact 
that its solution, if a solution is possible, would not 
only throw light upon some of the intricate and vexed 
problems of psychology, but would aid materially in 
dissipating many popular superstitions and widely 
spread delusions. 

To show how high Dr. Clarke stood as authority in medical 
science, it is only necessary to cite from an obituary article iiL 



Q2 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

the Boston Daily Advertiser, reproduced in Dr. Holmes' intro- 
duction. That article says he graduated at Harvard in 1841, 
got his medical degree in Philadelphia in 1846; was in 1855 
chosen professor of materia medica in Harvard University, and 
resigned in 1872. 

Dr. Clarke relates a number of instances in which highly 
credible persons had visions. Some of these were his own 
patients and the others were vouched for to him by his profes- 
sional brethren in whom he could confide. Reviewing the sub- 
ject of vision after relating seven cases, the author treats of 
the machinery of normal seeing and hearing, and says: 

If the modicum of truth hidden by the ignorance, 
superstition and charlatanism which surround such 
occurrences, could* be disinterred from its environment, 
a real service would be rendered to humanity. For 
where truth and error are united, if the truth can be 
discovered, error can be safely left to itself. Nothing 
dies so quickly as error and falsehood, when there 
is no truth to animate them. 

He then says it is a common but erroneous notion that we 
see with our eyes and hear with our ears and he proceeds to 
show that the seat of sensation is the brain. To this he de- 
votes several pages, in the course of which he employs the ex- 
periments of Dr. David Ferrier to show that a frog or a pigeon 
deprived of its brain retains sensation, but has no power of 
spontaneous action. From these experiments Dr. Clarke con- 
cludes that the brain is only one seat of sensation and that 
there is spinal as well as cerebral consciousness. Notwith- 



MARVELOUS VISIONS. Q - 

standing the frog and the pigeon, are shown to retain their 
sight and hearing after the removal of the brain hemispheres. 
Dr. Clarke fails to show that the brain is not the seat of sen- 
sation by which the senses of seeing and hearing are enjoyed. 

Dr. Clarke's work is replete with interesting matter, but 
only a small amount will be cited here in addition to what has 
been taken. He mentions the case of a young woman who 
had lost her voice in consequence of a severe attack of bron- 
chitis. He does not say what medical relief was sought, but 
she asked and obtained the consent of Dr. Ware of BostorPto 
seek aid from "a notorious charlatan, who cured disease in the 
old ecclesiastical way, by laying of hands on the affected re- 
gion." This charlatan restored her voice and she was "net- 
tled" because Dr. Ware seemed pleased but not surprised at her 
recovery. After a year she had another attack and "again 
put herself under the care of Dr. Ware," from which it appears 
plain that the doctor failed to cure her before she resorted to 
the charlatan. Again he failed and again she resorted to the 
charlatan who failed also. Here it is well to explain that 
after she was restored the previous year, Dr. Ware gave her his 
theory of the charlatanry by which she recovered her voice. 
In consequence, Dr. Ware told her, she had lost faith in the 
charlatan. Dr. Ware then adopted charlatanry himself; told 
her to sit down, concentrate all her power of will in an effort 
to speak, and her voice would return. She did as directed and 
the experiment was so successful that she retained her voice 
up to the time Dr. Ware told the author of the case. 

Dr. Clark on page 277 describes a death-bed scene in which 



n 4 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

the patient, a woman of refinement and education, appeared to 
have a vision and as she expired he says he experienced a sen- 
sation that made him perceive that something had departed 
from her. He does not say he saw anything but Dr. Holmes 
in his introduction intimates that Dr. Clarke used much more 
distinct language when relating to him what he experienced. 
From what both say the inference seems unavoidable that Dr. 
Clarke had a vision in which he saw the flight of that which is 
variously termed the soul, spirit, ego or identity, that animates 
mankind. 

As to Dr. Clarke's opinion of visions as realities, the opin- 
ion quoted by Dr. Holmes in his introduction is the best index. 
That opinion is thus expressed: 

Probably all such visions as these are automatic. 
But yet who, believing in God and personal immortal- 
ity, as the writer rejoices in doing, will dare to say 
absolutely all; will dare to assert there is no possi- 
ble exception. 



PROFESSOR FINNEY, 



THE GREAT REVIVALIST'S AND EDUCATOR'S CALL AND 
CAREER MIRACULOUS. 

Charles Granciison Finney was one of the most noted, as he 
was the most scholarly of revivalists of the early and^niddle 
part of the nineteenth century. In early life he was religious- 
ly inclined and was a prodigy of learning, for which reason his 
preceptor, when he was about twenty years old, advised him 
not to go to college, as he could master the Yale course in two 
years by pursuing his studies in private. Finney adopted the 
advice and took to teaching. At the age of 24 he began the 
study of law, was speedily admitted to practice in Adams, 
Henderson county, New York, and continued in that profes- 
sion four years. During all this time he was not a Christian 
in the accepted orthodox sense, though he appears to have been 
too regular in his attendance at church for the peace of the 
pastor and of the church-goers whom he worried by his 
criticisms until that good man declared his presence and lead- 
ership of the choir was dangerous to religion. 

Until he was 29 years old he had never owned a Bible, but 
when studying law met so many references to it that he 
bought one and studied it diligently. During Finney's child- 
hood and youth that part of Northwestern New York in which 
he was reared was the "far West." Churches and schools 



9 6 



PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 



were few and poor; preachers were generally ignorant in addi- 
tion to their rarity and poverty and Finney heard but little 
preaching that was endurable to him until he went to Connec- 
ticut in his twentieth year to pursue an academic course under 
a Yale graduate. With his mental acuteness and critical dis- 
position he found little satisfaction from the average sermon 
even in Connecticut and when he went to New Jersey and the 
South to teach, he heard no more preaching until he settled 
near his parents' home in ^dams, N. Y. 

His biographer, G. Frederick Wright, D. D., LL. D., a pro- 
fessor in Oberlin seminary, of which institution Prof. Finney 
was for many years president, who tells the story of his con- 
version, compares it to that of Saul of Tarsus. He says: "In 
Finney's own opinion this version of Gospel truth was in a 
large degree the result of the direct operation of the Holy Spir- 
it upon his mind." And he continues: 

The main facts of the Gospel, though in unattract- 
ive form, had, without doubt, been brought within his 
survey by the faithful pastors in Warren and in Adams, 
and perhaps even by those unlettered itinerants to 
whom he had listened in earlier days; while his own 
resistence to the manifold claims of duty had wrought 
up to the highest degree within him that sense of the 
need of divine grace which is the starting point of all 
true religious faith. Upon these elements of truth the 
illuminating spirit now descended as in a lightning 
stroke, and helped him to see the broad and reasonable 
basis upon which the Christian rests his hope of life 
and immortality. 



PROFESSOR FINNEY. Q 

In the busy street and in the light of day, there 
came to him a vision of Christ, transfixing him to the 
spot where he stood and arresting his whole train of 
worldly thought. For a considerable time he stood 
motionless where the vision met him, until at last he 
yielded to the summons and resolved that he would 
accept Christ that day or die in the attempt. 
In pursuance of this resolution, Finney retired to a deep 
wood and passed many hours in great perturbation of mind, 
which closed with a deep and earnest prayer for grace and 
more light. In the evening while alone in his office he again 
resorted to prayer and, as his biographer says, "he seemed to 
have a vision of the Lord and that Christ met him face to face." 
This vision his biographer calls an illusion in which he seemed 
to see Christ as a man. On being aroused he sat down by his 
fire and "received what he describes as 'a mighty baptism of . 
the Holy Ghost' This was an experience he was not looking 
for and of which he did not remember to have heard before." It 
is thus described: 

It seemed to him as if there was a positive force 
like electricity entering and penetrating his whole sys- 
tem. He wept aloud with joy and love and, to use his 
own words, 'literally bellowed out the unutterable 
gushings of his heart/ 

What followed his conversion was almost as miraculous 
as that event itself. In the morning Finney received a second 
"baptism of the Holy Ghost" and he resolved to at once respond 
to what he regarded as the Lord's call upon him to preach. 



9 8 



PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 



When a deacon of the church reminded him that he was to 
appear for him in a suit to be tried that morning, he told the 
litigant that he had been retained by the Lord Jesus and could 
not try the case. The deacon thereupon settled his suit and 
betook himself to prayer. The noise of Finney's conversion, 
circulated largely by himself, caused an impromptu meeting 
that evening and Finney made an open profession of religion, 
whereupon the minister, Mr. Gale, confessed that he had ex- 
pressed a doubt of God's power to convert such a sinner as 
Finney had been. Thenceforth Finney devoted himself large- 
ly to revival work and many who are still living as the nine- 
teenth century is closing will remember to have heard him in 
what is now the central West. His career as a revivalist, es- 
pecially his earliest years, were full of events that partook of 
the miraculous. Among these occurrences were several visit- 
ations like that which brought about his conversion. During 
the third year of his work as a revivalist and the first year after 
his ordination, those physical manifestations' known among 
the vulgar as "the jerks" made their appearance among his 
audiences and put an end to a violent controversy between 
Presbyterians, who had been exempt thitherto, and the Bap- 
tists, who had experienced them before Finney's arrival. 

The work from which this sketch has been derived was 
published in 1891 and it quotes from Dr. Aiken's Historical 
Sketch of Presbyterianism, thus: "After forty years, I am 
persuaded that it (Finney's revival work) was the work of 
God." 

Finney's belief in miracles was not confined to his early 



PROFESSOR FINNEY. QQ 

experiences. It did not cease with his conversion or his ca- 
reer as a revivalist. When he became a settled pastor in New 
York city, he says he found that he knew "comparatively little 
about Christ and that a multitude of things were" said about 
Him in the Gospel of which I had no spiritual view, and of 
which I knew little or nothing." How he learned more may 
best be told in his own words, viz.: 

What I did know of Christ was almost exclusively 
as an atoning and justifying Savior. But as a Jesus 
to save men from sin, or as a sanctifying Savior, I 
knew very little about him. This was made, by the 
spirit of God, very clear to my mind. And it deeply 
convinced me that I must know more of the Gospel in 
my own experience, and have more of Christ in my 
heart, or I never could expect to benefit the church. In 
that state of mind, I used often to tell the Lord Jesus 
Christ that I was sensible I knew very little about. 
Him, and I besought Him to reveal Himself to me, that 
I might be instrumental in revealing Him to others. 
I used especially to pray over particular passages and 
classes of passages in the Gospel, that speak of Christ, 
that I might apprehend their meaning and feel their 
power in my own heart. And I was often strongly 
convinced that I desired this for the purpose of making 
Christ known to others. 

I will not enter into details with regard to the 
way Christ led me. Suffice it to say, and alone to the 
honor of His grace do I say it, that He has taught me 



IoQ PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

some things that I asked him to show me. Since 
my own mind became impressed in the manner in 
which I have spoken, I have felt as strongly and un- 
equivocally pressed by the spirit of God to labor for 
the sanctifi cation of the church as I once did for the 
conversion of sinners. 

It will be apparent from this that Prof. Finney believed 
in the inspiration of modern evangelists. This belief must 
have been greatly strengthened by letters and from other 
sources that God rewarded his later labors by ''awakening a 
^spirit of inquiry on the subject of holiness throughout the 
church, both in this country and in Europe." 

His views were opposed by the leading New School Cal* 
vinists, who took measures to avoid responsibility for him and 
to preach against the new doctrine which he promulgated as a 
result of this inspiration, which he called "sanctification." 

As Finney never retracted but continued to prosper and 
grow in popularity, it seems evident that the opposition gave 
to his belief the approval of silence, so far as the New School 
Presbyterians were concerned. 

Finney disagreed with the Presbyterians in the matter of 
church government while in New York, and his church with- 
drew from that connection and became Congregational long 
before he devoted himself to Oberlin college. His belief in 
miracles, and the endorsement of his belief of his miraculous 
calling and inspiration by Presbyterians and Congregational- 
ists for half a century should of itself estop both from pleading 
that the age of miracles is past. 



PROFESSOR FINNEY. IOI 

The history of Oberiin college, as given in 
the biography of Finney by Cx. F. Wright, a 
professor in that institution, shows that the first president 
of the then "Oberiin academy" was miraculously or divinely 
guided to secure Finney. President Shepherd had started for 
Cincinnati on hearing that Lane seminary was being rent as- 
under by the negro question, to secure talent for his school, 
The roads were so execrable that he had decided to go to New 
York instead, because he could travel on the old na tiona l road 
while travel on the mud roads, 150 miles, to Cincinnati seemed 
impossible. 

At a tavern where he sojourned to rest his horses and. 
himself after a tedious pull to a central Ohio point, he met 
Theodore Keep, son of one of the directors of Oberiin, who 
urged him to proceed to Cincinnati and secure Asa Mahan, 
who was about to retire from the presidency of Lane. Keep 
also urged him to then continue his journey to New York and 
secure Finney, who had then reached almost the height of his 
fame as an evangelist.* 

Finney encountered not only stout opposition from Con- 
gregational and Presbyterian ministers, but from others also. 
Some of this opposition reached the point of violence, much of 
it because he made several innovations upon what were con- 
sidered established and respectable methods of revival work. 
Principal among his innovations was the ''anxious seat," or 
"mourners' bench," of which his biographer says he was the 
inventor. 

* Biography of Fitiney by Wrigrht, pp. 125 to 135 



I02 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

Among those who were stoutest in their opposition was 
Lyman Beecher, the patriarch of the talented tribe of preach- 
ers. Beecher told Finney to his face that if he ever entered 
New England he would meet him at the boundary arid contest 
every inch of ground with him. At that time, Finney was a 
Presbyterian. After some years, when a daughter of Beecher 
asked Finney if he were not going to visit Boston, he an- 
swered: "Not until your father invites me." Within a short 
time the orthodox ministers of Boston united in an invitation 
or request that Finney visit that city "and lo! the name of 
Lyman Beecher led the rest." 

In describing the work Finney did in the New England 
metropolis, Dr. Edward Beecher, son of the man who had de- 
clared war on him, said he honored Finney "and loved him as 
one as truly commissioned by God to declare His will as were 
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel or Paul." 

; The conversion of Lyman Beecher from a violent opponent 
to a friend, Finney regarded as one of the many evidences he 
had received of God's special interposition to prosper his work. 



WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 



PRESIDENT MARK HOPKINS BELIEVES THAT MIRA- 
CLES COME IN ANSWER TO PRAYER. 

Mark Hopkins, D. D., LL. D., for many years p resi dent of 
Williams college, in his "Law of Love and Love as Law," has 
a chapter devoted to prayer. In this he says prayer is not 
simply desire but paramount desire and that any form of ask- 
ing for anything, except for that for which this desire is para- 
mount, would not be asking. He says, p. 302, that any other 
asking would be hypocrisy to the omniscient eye and contin- 
ues: 

It is only a paramount desire presented to God 
with the submission becoming a creature, that is 
prayer, and the question is whether, in consequence of 
such prayer man would receive what he would not 
without it. On this point the Bible raises no doubt. 
There is in that no recognition of the difficulties raised 
by philosophy. 

In the matter of praying for rain Dr. Hopkins quotes 
approvingly from the Duke of Argyle's "Reign of Law," thus: 
There are no phenomena visible to man of which it 
is true to say they are governed by any invariable 
force. That which does govern them is always some 
variable combination of invariable forces. 



10 * PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

Upon this idea, carried out to its full development, Dr 
Hopkins reasons: 

If, as some suppose, man can cause rain by the fir- 
ing of cannon, then it may be obtained by asking it, 
even of Him. In such a case there would be simply a 
different adjustment of invariable laws; and if results 
may be thus produced to some extent by the interven- 
tion of human will, without a miracle, it cannot be ir- 
rational to suppose they may be thus produced to any 
extent by divine will. 



Rnsuxers to Pt*ayet*. 



THE POWER OF PRAYER. 



A PIOUS GERMAN'S COLLECTION OF CA^ES OF HEAL- 
ING BY FAITH. 

A modest little book published in German in Cincinnati 
under the title, "Power of the Prayer of Faith," contains be- 
tween seventy-five and one hundred instances in which 
prayers were answered in striking ways. The author, Karl 
Gottlob Schuh, gives no indication of his own standing in any 
church or in the community in which he lives — Greenville, 
Ohio — nut it is evident that he is a man of great piety and on 
terms of sufficient familiarity with people prominent in the 
religious world, to have received their consent to quote them as 
witnesses. 

The first miracle story in this book is attributed to "a 
well-known man of God." Shorn of its superfluous verbiage, 
it is this: The narrator, who was pastor of a church, found 
at his gate at daybreak a member of his congregation, weeping 
because her husband had gone away saying he would not re- 
turn until the religious excitement then prevailing should 
abate. As it was about time for an early morning prayer 
meeting, he conducted the woman thither and the congregation 
united in praying for the conversion of the fugitive. At a 
night meeting the supplications were renewed and with great 
fervor and solemnity. To the astonishment of the congrega- 



THE POWER OF PRAYER. I07 

tion the recreant entered, proclaimed his renunciation of Uni- 
versalism and said that while riding away he was overcome by 
a sense of his guilt and knew he must be born again. This 
man, the author relates upon his own account, is now one of 
the elders of a Presbyterian church and one of the most dili- 
gent servants of God that can be found. 

The value of this and many accounts of miraculous heal- 
ings and conversions, is impaired if not destroyed by the fail- 
ure of the author to properly authenticate them. The same 
is true to a degree of the story of his own experience in being 
healed of dyspepsia and catarrh, because he admits that his 
book was published before the healing was complete. The work 
is all the author of this work desires, however, because it is 
proof that orthodox Protestants do not all believe that the 
age of miracles is past. With what other evidence is here 
produced and precedes this chapter, it is in the nature of cor- 
roborative evidence. For further corroboration Mr. Schuh 
quotes Dwight L. Moody, J. S. Inskip, Bishop Bowman and 
others who are less prominent in the Christian world. 

The story of Bishop Bowman is of the healing by prayer 
of Bishop Simpson. Bowman was attending a conference of 
the Methodist Episcopal Church in Indiana in 1858 when the 
illness of Bishop Simpson was announced and Bishop Jones, 
who presided, asked the conference to unite in prayer for his 
restoration. William Taylor, the eminent missionary (since 
a bishop), led, and Bowman says he never heard so powerful 
a prayer. While on his knees he was impressed that the 
bishop would recover and he made a note of the exact time of 



IQ g PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

this manifestation. When next he saw the bishop that prelate 
was at work as ably and diligently as ever. Bowman asked 
the bishop concerning his recovery and learned that the turn- 
ing point of his disease was at the exact moment when he, 
Bowman, experienced the sensation described above, and dur- 
ing the prayer in the conference. The doctors had given him 
up and left his room. When they returned an hour later they 
were astounded at the improvement that had taken place dur- 
ing their absence, contrary to all human experience and ex- 
pectation. 

Inskip's story in brief is that illness had hindered him in 
his evangelistic work and threatened to end it and his earthly 
career. He describes his affliction in full in a letter dated May 
27, 1879. Though an evangelist, he seems not to have thought 
of resorting to prayer until suddenly attacked in Boston by a 
headache that compelled him to relinquish the conduct of an 
afternoon meeting. His hostess advised him to seek relief in 
prayer and quoted to him James v-14, 15. He and his host's 
family followed the suggestion; he was healed; conducted the 
evening meeting and had no return of his malady. 

One case, the authority for which is given as Dr. Edwin 
F. Hatfield, a well-known preacher of the Presbyterian Church, 
in the State of New York, is that of a little girl who was healed 
of paralysis and a serious affection of the hip-joint, both re- 
sulting from accident. After a season at a hospital and medi- 
cal and surgical treatment, without avail, the child of 9 or 10 
years was taken home and the pious mother resorted to prayer. 
Weeks of almost unremitting supplication, pious conversation 



THE POWER OF PRAYER. IOQ 

and study of the accounts of healings by the Lord Jesus when 
on earth followed. One day while thus engaged the little girl 
rose to get a drink of water when she suddenly called out: 
"Mother! See, I can walk again!" From that moment the 
girl found her crutches superfluous and examination showed 
that a great ulcer, which was among her afflictions, had disap- 
peared; the dislocation of the hip was reduced and the afflicted 
leg had been restored to as great perfection as the other. The 
girl was 21 years old when her mother related the case to Dr. 
Hatfield and had had no return of the maladies, but had been 
healed of another dangerous illness fifteen months after her 
first healing. 

Mr. Schuh publishes from Miss Carrie F. Judd of Buffalo, 
N. Y., who had considerable reputation as a faith-healer, the 
account of her healing. As her case may not be regarded as 
one proper to classify among evangelical Protestant cases, I 
will only say concerning it that its incorporation in Mr. Schuh's 
book gives it at least a partial standing in that class. 

The most remarkable case related by Mr. Schuh is that 
of Miss Jennie Smith of Dayton, Ohio, once of Middleburg or 
Spring Hills, Champaign county, of the same State. Through 
a series of misfortunes Miss Smith lost health; powers of loco- 
motion and paternal protection, all within a short time. Be- 
side this, her father before his death had lost all his property 
and left his widow and nine children in poverty. Miss Smith' 
traveled constantly as a missionary in a wheeled couch and 
after suffering and working sixteen years, without receiving 
any relief from doctors, she went to Philadelphia for treat- 



IIO PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

ment in 1S78. Her physician being a Christian, she suggested 
to him that prayer be tried instead of. a surgical operation and 
he consented. Three ministers who had been stationed in 
Dayton while Miss Smith lived there happened to be residing 
in Philadelphia and were present at her request when the 
prayer was offered. When faith had almost fled and strength 
forsaken her, she recalled the story of the withered hand. It 
seemed as if the heavens opened and an electric stream swept 
through her entire system and gave it new strength. She 
raised herself to a sitting position, her physician sprang to her 
side and let down the footboard of her wheel-chair, she sprang 
out, ran around the room and sang: "Praise God Prom All 
Blessings Flow." Miss Smith, says the author, now works 
great blessings among the railroad men in Eastern cities and 
goes about on foot instead of being wheeled in a chair as for- 
merly. 

Moody's story, located in Scotland, is much like that of the 
miraculous conversion of the Universalist attributed to an un- 
named pastor, in the first story herein referred to, and is no 
better authenticated. Nearly all of the other stories in this 
work depend upon the credulity of the reader to believe the 
words of unknown men and in many cases of men to whom the 
author gives neither habitation nor name. 



AN EXALTED AUTHORITY. 



QUEEN VICTORIA'S CHAPLAIN ON ANSWERS TO 
PRAYER BY MIRACULOUS MEANS. 

A very ordinary looking book bearing the title: "The New 
Cyclopaedia of Illustrative Anecdote" is the product of the 
genius of Rev. Donald Macleod, D. D., Chaplain to -Her Majes- 
ty, and editor of "Good Words." Anecdote 288, illustrative of 
the efficacy of prayer, tells how Rev. Richard Cecil was deliv- 
ered from the hands of three robbers on East Grinstead Com- 
mon. The minister when surrounded thought it "an occasion 
for faith" and recalled the Scripture passage: "Call upon me 
in time of trouble and I will deliver thee." When the leader 
asked h'im who he was, etc., and learned his identity, he or- 
dered the others to let him go. As Mr. Cecil had £16 on his 
person, he felt the escape to be miraculous, though the robber 
assured him he was released because the leader had heard him 
preach and knew him. 

Anecdote 856 tells of a lady traveling in her own coach, 
finding it hampered with provisions, ordered her servant to 
give the food away. The governess obtained leave to be the 
almoner and sought out the neatest premises in the village. 
There she found a starving woman on her knees praying for 
food and gave her a hamper full of choice viands. The poor 
woman, without rising, thanked Cod for having sent her the 



1 j 2 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

food. The writer of the story does not say in what country 
or at what date this occurred, but it is to be inferred that it was 
in the Christian land of Great Britain. 

Anecdote 872 is of Heine, Berlin's famous physician, who 
lost all his savings by a bank failure. The loss almost de- 
prived him of reason, but he resorted to prayer and his cheer- 
fulness and hope were restored. 

Number 874 is so striking that I am almost tempted to 
copy it entire. It tells of a party of Moravian ministers on 
the Britania, from London to St. Thomas, in the West Indies, 
when the ship was attacked by pirates. The missionaries re- 
tired to the cabin to pray when the crew prepared for battle. 
The pirate fired several broadsides and, though within grap- 
pling distance, failed to hit the Britania. The pirates threw 
grapplers, but failed to catch them and when they thought they 
could destroy the mission ship by more firing, a sudden squall 
prevented their shots taking effect. When the smoke of battle 
rose the pirate saw the Britania sailing serenely away under 
fu!I canvass. On this the compiler comments: ''Thus won- 
derfully did God answer prayer and save the vessel." 

These few, taken from among many similar anecdotes, 
should be sufficient to show that the chaplain to Queen Vic- 
toria of England, etc., believed in miracles as late as 1872, when 
the Rev. Dr. Thomas Guthrie of Edinburgh wrote to Dr. Mac- 
leod a letter commending his work which the compiler says 
was intended as an aid to the teacher and preacher in the 
school or the pulpit. Dr. Guthrie says it must be of great 
service to the ministry "by furnishing them with suitable and 



AN EXALTED AUTHORITY. j j ~ 

striking illustrations of both its doctrines and its duties." 

One incident I cannot forbear to mention, though it is for- 
eign to the object of this work. It tells of Archbishop Usher, 
having heard much of Rev. Samuel Rutherford's piety, decided 
to visit him when visiting Scotland. Disguised as a pauper 
he begged lodging of the famous preacher, who seated him in 
the kitchen while he apprised Mrs. Rutherford of his presence. 
Mrs. R., desirous of testing the orthodoxy of her guest, 
asked him how many commandments there were and: he an- 
swered: ''Eleven." The pious woman rebuked his ignorance 
sharply and sent him to bed in a garret. Mr. Rutherford, hear- 
ing him at prayer, decided to treat him more becomingly and, 
having learned his identity, invited him to occupy his pulpit. 
The archbishop accepted and took for his text: "A new 
commandment give I unto you," etc. 

Mrs. Rutherford was deeply humiliated, of course, when 
she learned that she had snubbed an archbishop while enter- 
taining an angel unawares. This same story is told and in 
much more interesting form in Dr. J. V. Watson's book, which 
is mentioned in the chapter devoted to Methodists. Its author 
was no less notable writer than T. S. Arthur, who was famed 
in his days as a writer of highly moral fiction. 



TO HELP PREACHERS. 



A BOOK WITH MIRACLE STORIES TO ENLIVEN AND IL- 
LUSTRATE SERMONS. 

Miracles seem to play an important part in the instruction 
of ministers. In books nublished for their benefit and to aid 
them in preaching, special providences and answers to prayer 
form the bases of many anecdotes compiled to enable preachers 
to liven their sermons and illustrate points therein. One of 
these books is "The Dictionary of Anecdote and Illustrative 
Fact," compiled by Rev. Walter Baxendale, author of ''The 
Preacher's Commentary on the Book of Ruth/' The author's 
name is not important, as he gives his authority for most of the 
anecdotes, some of whom are eminent in the religious world. 
These stories are attributed to Spurgeon. The second is put 
in condensed form to save room: 

SPURGEON ON PRAYER. 
A preacher, whose sermons had converted men by 
scores, received a revelation from heaven that not one 
of the conversions was owing to his talents or elo- 
quence, but all to the prayers of an illiterate lay-broth- 
er who sat on the pulpit steps, pleading all the time for 
the success of the sermon. 

Some two years ago a poor woman came to my 
vestry in deep distress because her husband had ab- 



TO HELP PREACHERS. j x c 

sconded. When her tale was told I said: "All we could 
do was to kneel and cry to the Lord for the conversion 
of your husband." We knelt and prayed and when we 
rose I bade the woman noc to fret as I felt sure the 
deserter would return. Some months later, when I 
had forgotten the incident, the woman came, accompa- 
nied by her husband, who had been converted. Inqui- 
ry showed that on the very day we prayed fo r him ; 
while he was at sea, he found a stray copy of one of my 
sermons, read it, and was converted. As soon as pos- 
sible, he returned to his wife and was admitted to 
the church. 

I sat side by side with a brother minister not many 
daj r s ago, who remarked to me: "I'm afraid many of 
our people do not believe in prayer." "Oh, dear!" I - 
said, "1 would not -be a minister of such a church five 
minutes." 

An extract from an interview with Spurgeon, taken from 
the Pall Mall Gazette is to the effect that his faith in the effica- 
cy of prayer was growing stronger and firmer than ever. 

It is not a matter of faith with me, but of knowl- 
edge and everyday experience. I am constantly wit- 
nessing the most unmistakable answers to prayer. 
* * * Look at my orphanage. To keep it going en- 
tails an annual expenditure of about £10,000. Only 
£1400 is provided by endowment. The remaining 
£8000 comes to me regularly in answer to prayer. I 



IX 5 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

do not know where I shall get it from day to day. I 
ask God for it and He sends it. 

LUTHER'S BELIEF. 
Martin Luther is often quoted by those religionists who 
discountenance belief in miracles, but the compiler of this dic- 
tionary has found several extracts from his sayings in support 
of a belief in the miraculous answer to prayer. Tholuck is 
quoted to the effect that at the time the diet of Nuremberg was 
held, Luther was praying at home. At the very hour when 
the edict granting free toleration to Protestants was granted 
he ran out of his house crying out: "We have gained the 
victory!" 

Anecdote 4253 tells of Luther's prayers prolonging Melanc- 
thon's life. Melancthon was supposed to be on his deathbed 
when Luther hastened to him and aroused him by a sorrowful 
exclamation, when Melancthon begged to be allowed to depart 
in peace. Luther replied: "We can't spare you yet," fell 
upon his knees and prayed fervently for his recovery. He then 
ordered some soup and bade Melancthon eat it. When he de- 
clined Luther threatened to excommunicate him. Melanc- 
thon obeyed and recovered. When Luther returned home he 
told his wife: "God gave me my brother Melancthon back, 
in direct answer to my prayers." Luther is also thus quoted: 
Just as a shoemaker makes a shoe or a tailor a 
coat, so also ought the Christian to pray. The Chris- 
tian's trade is praying, and the prayer of the church 
works great miracles. In our day it has raised from 
the dead three persons, viz.: myself, having been fre- 



TO HELP PREACHERS. IJ7 

quently sick unto death; my wife, Catharine, who like- 
wise was dangerously ill, and Melancthon, who was 
sick unto death at Weimar. And though their rescue 
from sickness and other bodily dangers be but trifling 
miracles, nevertheless they must be exhibited for the 
sake of those whose faith is weak. 

OTHER AUTHORITIES. 

The Christian Age, a religious paper, is credited with an- 
ecdote 4249. It tells of a pastor who devoted a weeirto study- 
ing a sermon, which suddenly, on Saturday, ''became to him 
stale and dry" and "instantly another text lodged into his 
mind" and rapidly ran into a sermon which he preached Sun- 
day morning. At the close of the service a lady remained "to 
confer with the session of the church respecting a profession of 
faith." She belonged to a Catholic family, but the light re- 
ceived from that sermon had converted her. In accounting 
for the change of sermon, the writer in the Age says a friend 
of the lady had been praying eleven years for her conversion 
and that on the Saturday when the minister made the change 
a party of the lady's friends had "united in praying that the 
pastor might on the next Sabbath say something that would 
meet the case of the lady who was expected to be present in 
the church on that morning." 

C. T. Harris is authority for the story that a pious lady in 
Hereford, England, while praying became impressed that she 
ought to send £50 to a Mr. Bourne "for carrying on the work 
of the Lord." After conferring with her mother, she decided 
to test the correctness of her impression. Her brother was 



I]L 3 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

dispatched to Bemersley to investigate. In an interview with 
Mr. Bourne he asked that gentleman if he had been praying 
for ''anything special." Mr. B. promptly responded: "Yes, 
for £50; for we are in great need of that sum;" which was giv- 
en him. Mr. Harris seems to have been so deeply impressed 
with this miracle that he forgot to say in what branch of the 
Lord's work Mr. Bourne was engaged. He seems to have con- 
sidered Mr. Bourne and his work to be too well known to have 
needed description or explanation. 

Krummacher, a somewhat celebrated German writer on 
religious subjects, is the author of a story of healing through 
jthe prayer of a four-year-old child. The child's mother was 
so ill that the doctors had given her up. When the child heard 
the verdict "she went into an adjoining room, knelt down and 
said: 'Dear Lord Jesus, oh make mother well again.' After 
she had thus prayed she said, as though in God's name, 'Yes, 
my dear child, I will do it gladly.' ' The child then ran to 
her mother and assured her she would get well, which she did. 
Upon this incident, which is here greatly abbreviated Krum- 
macher comments thus: 

Is it, then, always permitted for me to pray thus 

unconditionally respecting temporal concerns? No, thou 

must not venture to do so, if whilst you ask you doubt. 

From Stephenson's "Praying and Working" is quoted a 
remark of one who stood by the grave of Gossner and the edit- 
or says it was not hyperbole, viz. : 

He prayed up the walls of an hospital, and the 

hearts of the nurses; he prayed missionary stations 



TO HELP PREACHERS. IJQ 

into being and missionaries into faith; he prayed open 

the hearts of the rich and gold from the most distant 

lands. 

Dr. Liefchiid is given as authority for a case in which a 
Christian traveling in Italy heard of a young soldier who was 
condemned to be shot at 9 o'clock of the morning he heard of 
it while he was at breakfast. He at once retired to pray for 
the soldier's salvation; that, if he were not prepared to die, 
his execution might be postponed until he should repent. While 
on his knees the Christian heard a volley and was soon obliged 
to hasten from the town. About two months later he reaeKin 
a paper that, though that volley was fired at the condemned 
soldier, not a bullet took effect. So -miraculous was the es- 
cape considered that his pardon was granted. 

Archdeacon Farrar is given as authority for this; "More 
than one saint, like St. Francis, and like Wesley, has left be- 
hind the record that God has never refused him anything" for 
which he seriously prayed. It can gain for us everything, not 
perhaps, that we wish, but everything that we want." 

At least half a score of other cases of answers to prayer 
are given in this book, but they are not authenticated. They 
include rescue of vessels from destruction: escape from death 
in battle, from sharks, the raising of wind to turn mills when 
people were suffering for bread; the capture of a negro and his 
wife as slaves that they might be converted. 

That these anecdotes have been employed by preachers is 
evinced by the fact that the volume I have used has been well 
thumbed and has many little crosses marked against para- 



I20 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

graph*, some of which are here mentioned. Though I have 
not cited all of the cases which appear miraculous, it is a lit- 
tle remarkable that only two paragraphs about miracles are 
noted in the index. One of these stories is attributed to Lu- 
ther as exposing a fraud and the other is a remark of an Ox- 
ford professor, viz.: 'Tf you believe in miracles you will be 
nothing better and if you do not, you will be nothing worse.'* 

Anecdote 4961 is attributed to The Hague Tageblatti. 
(Newspaper, date not given.) It tells of an infidel paper manu- 
facturer who said he would have machinery work Sundays and 
weekdays alike and make more money. The inauguration of 
the machinery was celebrated by a feast in the works, during 
which the paper maker scoffingly compared his boilers to hell. 
Almost at that moment the boilers exploded and killed the 
scoffer. 

This naturally recalls the sensational story that appears 
semi-periodically in American newspapers of the man who is 
stricken dumb, blind or deaf for blasphemous revilings when 
excessive rain., drouth or other untoward conditions have ru- 
ined his crops or otherwise sent accumulated misfortunes upon 
him. These stories are nearly always so located that verifica- 
tion or refutation is difficult, but the eagerness with which they 
are utilized by many ministers in their exhortations is abund- 
ant evidence that there is a very widespread belief in so much 
of the miraculous as suits the purposes or prejudices of those 
who hear marvelous stories like these. 



CALIFORNIA MIRACLES. 

A PREACHER MYSTERIOUSLY SUPPLIED WITH MEANS 
TO DEFEAT AN INFIDEL. 

Rev. W. H. Briggs is a minister of the Christian church 
tv ho, as this article is being written, is being written about 
and read about as the minister who turned street railroad con- 
ductor to make a living rather than whine to be taken back 
into the church after the hand of fellowship had been with- 
drawn. Mr. Briggs is an A. M., and has lived in San Joaquin 
county, California, since childhood and during most of his 
manhood has been a preacher of the Christian Church, which rs 
generally known as the Campbellite. 

In 1883 he was challenged to discuss with Colonel Kelso, a 
well-known resident of that county and equally well known as 
a champion of Colonel Robert G. Ingerscll's views of religion. 
Briggs accepted without hesitation, but felt hardly equal to the 
contest as Col. Kelso was regarded as the "boss agnostic" of 
that region. The debates were to be held at two points in the 
county, one of which was generally regarded as infidel head- 
quarters. 

Briggs was not as well equipped for the debate as he de- 
sired to be. He had never read more than fragments of In- 
gersoll's lectures, which he assumed would form the basis of 
Col. Kelso's speeches. He found it impossible to send away 
for a copy of any of his lectures and prayed earnestly that the 
Lord would furnish him the information by some means. He 



2 22 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

also prayed for a copy of the works of Wilford Hall, a noted 
Universalist writer. The time was growing short for answers 
to his prayers when, as he was driving from Clements to Brand 
House one dusty day, his horse shied at something in the road 
and as he passed the object he saw it was a book. He reined 
in his horse and found the book not six inches from the track 
of The buggy wheels. It was brand new and on examination 
he found it to be a volume of Ingersoll's lectures. Who lost 
it h' 1 never could discover and it remained long in his library. 

The next Sunday he held services at Woodbridge, when a 
young lady, who is now the wife of a public officer of San Joa- 
quin county, met him just before the services opened and hand- 
ed him a copy of Dr. Hail's work, saying her father thought it 
vyoulti be of use to him in the forthcoming debate. He had not 
expressed his wish for either of these works to any mortal and 
had no opportunity of communicating them to anyone in 
Woodbridge. 

Mr. Briggs' heart was greatly lightened. He read both 
works and if the testimony of those who heard the eight days' 
debate is conclusive evidence, the Lord enabled him to defeat 
his agnostic adversary- The Lord's intervention did not end 
with the furnishing of the ammunition for the debate. It 
resulted in the building of churches at Acampo and Elliott, in 
San Joaquin county, the latter place having been regarded as 
a field in which it would be idle to hope for a church. Very 
naturally, Mr. Briggs and his friends, who are numerous 
throughout San Joaquin and neighboring counties, think the 
Lord wrought at least three miracles in connection with that 
debate. 



NON-RELIGIOUS MIRACLES. 



MARVELOUS WORKS WHEREIN PRAYER OR FAITH HAD 

NO PART. 

It seems astonishing that many people who doubt that even 
Jesus of Nazareth performed the miracles attributed to him in 
the Gospels are very ready to believe accounts of healings quite 
as marvelous when performed by men who make no pretension 
to being reformers or even to religious belief. 

Who does not remember or has not heard of Dr. Newton, 
who, a generation ago, traveled all over the United States and 
perhaps Europe also, performing instantaneous cures of many 
forms of disease and "coining" money thereby. He was not 
attacked by the pulpit or the press because he did not try to 
organize a new sect, and he did pay well for advertising. 

A quarter of a century later a "Boy Wonder" made tours 
of the whole country on a like mission. He was widely ad- 
vertised and paid handsomely for daily "write-ups" in the 
daily newspapers. That he performed astonishing cures there 
are witnesses in nearly every town and city he visited. He 
was a boy when he set out in his career, but must be nearly 
thirty-five years old now. After he visited the Pacific coast 
about 1894, he decided to remain in the East and the company 
of which he was the star found another boy wonder and, with- 
out a change in their dead-wall, show-paper or advertising, 
they made another tour. 



12 a PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

While in Stockton, California, they heard of B. M. Hohen- 
shell, a former farmer, who discovered in young manhood that 
he possessed great magnetic powers which he utilized for heal- 
ing the sick, but Mr. Hohenshell declined a tempting offer to 
become a boy wonder abroad. He continued his practice at 
home, does not advertise but goes about his work much as 
does a physician, doing all the good he can in a modest way, 
making plenty of money probably, but doing a vast amount of 
work without hope of pecuniary reward. He believes in his 
power and uses it to the best of his ability. I have no words 
except those of commendation for him though I do not know 
him. personally. I have within a few years heard much of his 
almost angelic ministrations and honor him for the good he 
has done. I do think it strange — passing strange, however, 
that those who firmly believe in "Barney" Hohensheirs power 
should disbelieve the evidence of their own eyes and ears in 
the form of friends and acquaintances who have been restored 
to health by the aid of Christian Science after the doctors ha<3 
given them up. Beside these there are all around Mr. Hohen- 
sheirs home many who were given up to die by the drug-doc- 
tors within from one to three months and who turned to sci- 
ence and have survived, now, from a few months to several 
years. 

Some years ago the London Medical Times contained an 
account of an experiment on four condemned men in Russia. 
They were put to sleep on beds whereon victims of cholera had 
died, but were ignorant of the fact. After ample time being 
given for the dread disease to develop not one gave any symp- 



NON-RELIGIOUS MIRACLES. oc 

ton- of the plague. They were subsequently told that they 
must sleep on beds that had been occupied by cholera patients 
and. though the beds were perfectly clean and had not been 
so occupied, three of them were attacked by cholera and died 
within four hours. 

MIRACLE OF THE MULE. 

One of the most widely believed notions of the laws of nat- 
ure is that hybrids are barren. So firmly fixed is this idea 
that efforts to test its truth are rare, if they are ever made. 
The idea was crystallized by "Josh Billings," I think, in his 
reference to a temporary political party. He said it was like 
a mule because it was without pride of ancestry or hope of pos- 
terity. It is a well-established fact, however, that James 
Journeay of Stockton, California, is the owner of a mule mare 
that bore a colt. The animal, now (1899) about seven years 
old, is on Mr. Journeay's ranch, five or six miles from Stockton. 
When so young that the motherhood of the mule could be 
demonstrated by her suckling the colt, both mother and foal 
v/ere publicly exhibited on the plaza or Hunter-street square 
in Stockton and the fact is susceptible of ample proof. 

I do not cite this well-attested fact as evidence that a mira- 
cle has occurred during the last decade of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, but to show that not all of nature's laws are understood 
by present day philosophers. Though Mr. Journeay's mule is 
not an exceptional animal in any other way, she is such an ex- 
ception in that one regard as to break the supposed rule or to 
show that to supposed laws of nature there can be exceptions 
which by no means prove the rule. 



I2 6 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

A PHYSICAL MIRACLE. 

In ,a recent- number of McClure's Magazine is an article on 
the new power derived from the liquif action of air. The 
accomplishment of this liquefaction would have been pro- 
nounced a miracle by most scientists as late as the noon of the 
present .century, if not even as late as the last decade thereof. 
The article shows that liquified air not only solves the supposed 
insoluble problem of perpetual motion, but actually multiplies 
its cwn power indefinitely and accomplishes many other won- 
ders. The discoverer of the process declares that it will solve 
the problem of aerial navigation and makes his opinion appear 
very plausible. This notice of the discovery and its wonders 
is sufficient for my purpose here, but those who are skeptical 
concerning present day miracles should read the article which 
appears in the March number for 1899 of McClure's. 
^NEWSPAPER MIRACLES. 

While religious as well as secular newspapers either dis- 
credit or ignore accounts of non-sensational as well as religious 
miracles, they both employ the adjective "miraculous" to de- 
scribe narrow or marvelous escapes from death. So common 
is the habit that they often tell their readers that occurrences 
are miracles and then proceed to so describe them that every 
element of the miraculous is eliminated. That this is but a 
criticism on the language they employ I admit in part, but not 
in toto and especially as regards the religious press in which 
it is comparatively common to find stories of answers to 
prayers and events that are properly classifiable as miracles. 

I have recently read a newspaper story of the mysterious 



NON-RELIGIOUS MIRACLES. T ~ 

7 

circulation of news in the prison at Dannemora, N. Y. This 
story says the convicts often know the result of a prize-fight 
or other ' 'sporting" event before the officers of the prison know 
it, though every effort is made to keep the news from reaching 
them. It also says the convicts know when executions are to 
take place, though they are not allowed to have newspapers 
containing the news and every means is employed to keep them 
in ignorance. 

This naturally recalls the accounts of missionaries in India 
who first told the world of the mysterious means by which in- 
formation was transmitted by natives in that country far in 
advance of the swiftest means known to the whites. During 
the Sepoy rebellion in that country, this mysterious power was 
often mentioned and respectable British authority said the dis- 
aster at Cawnpore was known among the native population of 
the cities in the possession of the British long before the swift- 
est horses could bear couriers with reports to the officials. One 
writer, cited I think by Lecky, says the first accounts of the 
disaster were received from Parsee merchants. 



HYMNS THAT BETRAY. 



EXTRACTS FROM PETITIONS IN VERSE, FOR SPECIAL 
FAVORS FROM PROVIDENCE. 

If Protestantism has rejected the miraculous it should re- 
vise its hymnology to suit its profession. In opening a little 
volume of Gospel Hymns, published in 1883, the first that ar- 
rested my attention was that beautiful poem, "Jesus Lover of 
My Soul." The third verse is a refutation of the pretense. It 
reads: 

Thou, O Christ, art all I want; 
More than all in thee I find: 
Raise the fallen, cheer the faint 
Heal the sick and lead the blind. 
Hymn No. 90 of the same volume, which is a compilation 
of the songs used by Evangelist Moody, contains this: 
I leave it all with Jesus., 

For He knows 
How to steal the bitter 

From life's woes; 
How to gild the tear-drop 

With His smile, 
Make the desert garden 
Bloom awhile. 
Number 107 of these hymns is a rhyming version of that 



HYMNS THAT BETRAY. I2Q 

sublime poem Psalm xxiii, which promises many earthly bless- 
ings and immunities. This may be said to be so strictly poet- 
ical as not to constitute a basis for a valid argument, but if it is 
to be so regarded then Holy Writ must be at least half repudi- 
ated while the poem is taught and will probably always be 
taught in the Sunday schools as one of the greatest of religious 
gems. 

Who that ever read Newman's ''Lead. Kindly Light" doubt- 
ed that it was a prayer for inspiration? After it had been ban- 
ished from the hymnals of the Anglican church for many years 
after the author became a Catholic, it has reappeared and can 
now be found in the books of nearly all denominations. 

The hymnal of the Protestant Episcopal church in the 
United States, of 1874, approved by the general convention of 
that church in the same year, contains hymns of which the 
following are extracts: 

No. 264 — Star of hope, gleam on the billow, 
Bless the soul that sighs for thee, 

Bless the sailor's lonely pillow, 

Far, far at sea. 
No. 267 — Eternal Father! strong to save, 

Whose arm hath bound the restless' wave, 

Who bid'st the mighty ocean deep 

Its own appointed limits keep; 

Oh hear us when we cry to thee 

For those in peril on the sea. 
No. 269 — To Thee I raised my humble prayer 
To snatch me from the grave; 



j^q PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

I found Thine ear not slow to hear 
Nor short Thine arm to save. 
These are all for help to those who go down to the sea in 
ships, but there are others that pray for divine inspiration, 
help, etc. The following are from hymns on the ordination of 
ministers: 

; No. 270 — Lord, pour Thy Spirit from on high, 

And Thine ordained servants bless; 
Graces and gifts to each supply, 

And clothe Thy priests with righteousness. 
No. .271 — Clothe then, with energy divine 

Their words and let those words be Thine; 
To them Thy sacred truth reveal, 
Suppress their fear, inflame their zeal. 
Verse 3 of hymn 254 reads: 

Choose Thou for me my friends, 

My sickness or my health; 
Choose Thou my cares for me, 

My poverty or wealth. 
Not mine, not mine the choice, 

In things or great or small 
Be Thou my guide, my strength, 
• My wisdom and my all. 
Hymn No. 249, under the head of "Visitation of the Sick,'' 
bids the patient cast aside fear, assures him that the Lord will 
provide. The fourth verse reads: 

Did ever trouble yet befall, 
And He refuse to hear thy call? 



HYMNS THAT BETRAY. -£„ 

And has He not His promise past 
That thou shalt overcome at last? 
It will strike the student of Christian Science that those 
who have endorsed this or who adhere to a church of whose 
service it is a part, are estopped from denouncing prayer cure, 
faith cure, or any other form of healing in which prayer is even 
a part. 

As the Moody hymns represent all whom the Episcopal 
people group under the general head of ''the sects," I do not 
care to quote more copiously from their hymns. I have quot- 
ed more freely from the Anglican book because it represents 
a church that has been most conspicuous in past years for its 
attack upon the miraculous. 

In a collection of hymns compiled in 1885 by C. C. Cline 
and published in Covington, Ky., No. 8 contains this as verse 4; 
Comfort those who weep and mourn; 
Let the time of joy return; 
Those that are cast down lift up; 
Make them strong in faith and hope. 
No. 62, by Isaac Watts, whose orthodoxy will not be dis- 
puted, contains this verse: 

He pardons all thy sins, 

Prolongs thy feeble breath; 
He healeth thine infirmities 
And ransoms thee from death. 
The "Illustrated History of Hymns," by Rev. Edwin M. 
Long, author of several hymns, contains much that teaches 
what some Protestants deny. One story, which I found on 



I i 2 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

opening the book, is on page 449 and is in brief this: In 1826 
five missionaries, the wives of three and several children Were 
in a wreck off the coast of Antigua. When the storm arose 
the little son of one of the missionaries gave out a verse of a 
hymn commencing: 

"Though waves and storms go o'er my head." 
and when it had been sung the child delivered an address on 
the shipwreck of Jonah and the author says a holy inspiration 
some over the child and affected all who heard him. 

The wife of one of the missionaries was the only one 
who was calm enough to pray and when she had done so she 
sang: 

When passing through the watery deep 

I asked in faith his promised aid, 
The waves an awful distance keep 

And shrink from my devoted head. 
Fearless their violence I dare 
They cannot harm for God is there. 
Sad to say, she was the only one saved out of that party. 
On pages 303, 304 and 305 is the story of George Neumark, who 
was reduced to such dire straits in Hamburg in 1651 that he 
2iad to pawn his violincello, which had been his chief means 
®f supporting life. Before parting with it he improvised a 
hymn and accompanied his voice on the instrument, in the 
pawnbroker's house. A passer-by was charmed with the sen- 
timent and music and sought a copy. When Neumark had ac- 
commodated him the stranger took him to his master, the 
Swedish embassador, who made him his secretary. His grat- 



HYMNS THAT BETRAY. T ^ 

itude to God for this interposition he put in the form of a 
hymn, one verse of which is: 

Leave God to order all thy ways 
And hone in Him whate'er betide, 

Thou'lt find him in the evil days, 
Thine all sufficient strength and guide. 

Who trusts in God's unchanging love, 

Builds on the rock that ne'er can move. 
When asked if this was his own composition, Neumark 
answered- "Well, yes. I am the instrument, but God swept 
the strings." 

This book contains over 600 pages and is replete with anec- 
dotes and extracts from hymns in which the miraculous 
abounds. If these hymns and these anecdotes do not teach 
that the age of miracles has been extended to the gloaming of 
the nineteenth century and the dawn of the twentieth, what 
do they mean? If those who wrote the hymns and related the 
anecdotes do not mean that they believe God sets aside known 
laws or grants prayer by the operation of laws unknown to 
man they mean worse than nothing. If they do not believe in 
what is called the miraculous they are confessedly false 
teachers who are taking the name of God in vain — uttering 
blasphemy by praying God for favors they do not believe He 
will grant. I prefer to believe the best of the authors of both 
hymns and anecdotes and to also believe that those who at- 
tack Christian Science, on the assumed ground that the age of 
miracles is past, are endeavoring to obtain religious advan- 
tages on false pretenses. This is a serious charge, as I make 



-^j. PROTESTANT MIRACLBS. 

it, because in the school of ethics in which I was trained it is 
blasphemous in employing sin to further the cause of religion. 
I acquit these zealous brethren of willful hypocrisy, remember- 
ing that there are, according to Robert Colyer, the great 
Unitarian, I think, two classes of hypocrites, the conscious 
and the unconscious. It will remain for any of the attacking 
party to adjust to himself the accusation of willful hypocrisy 
by persisting in attacks after his attention has been directed 
to his own error. 



MISCELLANEOUS MYSTERIES. 

A COLLECTION OF MARVELS THAT RANGE FROM THE 
SUBLIME TO THE ABSURD. 

Some of the marvels grouped under this head may not be 
properly classed as Protestant, but all or nearly all indicate 
some degree of Protestant belief in present supernatural aid 
to man. 

Dr. Edward Berdoe has an article in the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury of October. 1895, descriptive of a visit to the grotto of 
Lourdes. He says: 

This earnestness on the part of the worshipers, if 
it do not take heaven by storm, exalts the whole or- 
ganism and serves, of itself, to explain much of the 
thaumaturgy. 
He also says: 

As Christianity has no monopoly of faith healing, 
w^e may imagine what it is which underlies all these 
phenomena. To set them aside as silly talk and priest- 
ly frauds is to betray the non-scientific mind. So uni- 
versal a thaumaturgy implies a basis of fact which we 
must not despise. Professor Charcot has lent the great 
weight of his authority to the statement that faith-cure 
is an ideal method, since it oftens attains its end after 
all other means have failed. 
Dr. Berdoe then cites M. Littre in "Fragment de Medicine 



136 



PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 



Retrospective," where he describes seven miracles wrought at 
the tomb of St. Louis and atempts to give a pathological inter- 
pretation of them, which Dr. Berdoe does not expressly en- 
dorse. He closes his article by saying that the scientific view 
of miracles of healing is no detraction from the power of 
prayer: "God ever works by natural laws; we use the word 
'miracles' for the effect of natural laws which we do not un- 
derstand." His closing lines are these: 

If the cure be wrought, what matters it to the 
happy invalid who, like Marie in M. Zola's novel, 
jumps from her wheel chair and, trailing it behind her, 
joins the procession of thanksgivers — whether the 
cure is wrought by the touch of a divine hand or the 
overpowering influence of a great idea on the nervous 
system. 

BOEHME'S MYSTICISM. 
Though mysticism and miracle-ism are not identical, they 
are nearly so in some cases. Jacob Boehme, the German mys- 
tic writer .of the seventeenth century, did not pretend to per- 
form miracles but to have witnessed many, and the fact that 
he had a large following among even well educated non-Catho- 
lics, shows that Protestants in Germany were not unanimous 
<n the opinion that miracles were things of a past age. Even in 
England he had followers and his writings were translated by 
William Law, an eminent English clergyman. Law was an 
author of the so-called mystic school of his day but, though 
discountenanced by the established church, the Wesley 
brothers acknowledge that they derived great benefit from his 
"Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life." 



MISCELLANEOUS MYSTERIES. x - ^ 

A biography of Boehme, translated by Franz Hartmann, 
M. D., and published in 1891 in London, shows that Boehme, 
while a herder of cattle in his boyhood, had been guided by a 
vision to a cave where he found a pot of gold. Deeming the 
gold and the vision the result of a satanic plot, he fled without 
the treasure. A few years later, while an apprentice to a shoe- 
maker, a mysterious stranger appeared to him, paid an extra- 
ordinary price for a pair of shoes, called him by name and re- 
vealed to him his future greatness, and admonished him to 
read the Bible, in which he would find comfort. He continued 
to have visions and, between 1612 and 1624, he wrote many 
books describing what he saw in those visions. 
EVIDENCE OF MIRACLES. 

Bishop Douglas of the Church of England is quoted by a 
writer in Blackwood's Magazine for November, 1823, as to the 
rules respecting the evidence of miracles. They are only two 
in number, but the explanation is somewhat lengthy and the 
rules, etc., are here presented: 

1. That whenever a fact can be ascribed, however 
remotely, to natural causes, any reference to Divine 
interposition is absolutely excluded. 

2. Whenever the testimony affords ground even 
for a suspicion of fraud, it must be rejected entirely 
and at once. 

A suspicion of fraud is entertained: 

1. If the accounts of the alleged miracles were not 
published to the world till long after the time when 
they are said to have been performed. 

2. If the accounts were published at a distance 



138 



PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 



from the place where the miraculous agency was sup- 
posed to be manifested. 

3. If at the time when and the place where they 
are said to have happened, they have been suffered to 
pass without due examination. 

AS TO INSPIRATION. 
Inspiration is a word over whose meaning a vast amount 
has been written. It is employed here in the sense of an extra- 
ordinary or divine agency by which God operates on the minds 
of teachers, speakers and writers, who are thus taught or 
guided how to teach, speak and write. This I find to be the 
sense in which the term is employed by people who attribute 
to certain preachers or religious teachers more than human 
power or wisdom. 

Inspiration is a difficult term to define. The definition, of 
the dictionaries will hardly do, because nearly every religious 
body gives to it a little different meaning. Some regard a 
preacher as inspired when he becomes excited and gives ex- 
pression to unusual ideas; some regard the authors of new 
doctrine and dogma as inspired; some so regard a person who 
feels impelled to undertake any religious or philanthropic work 
and brings to his aid such zeal and enthusiasm as awakens like 
zeal and enthusiasm as w T ell as liberality in others. While 
these variations of definitions do not vary so widely as to be in- 
consistent, they serve to illustrate the latitude taken by those 
who use the word in application to the talents or deeds of those 
whom they admire or whose cause they espouse. It seems not 
to make much difference whether the person thus regarded as 
inspired be poet, patriot, preacher, soldier, explorer or mere 



MISCELLANEOUS MYSTERIES. j^g 

politician. If he acts or speaks with fervor on "my" side he 
is inspired; if on the other, "he hath a devil." In either case 
the mere notion of inspiration is the same. The only difference 
of opinion is as to the source. 

Thousands regarded Wesley as inspired and the thousands 
have grown into millions in the present century. Within the 
memory of living men, women and children, Moody, Ham- 
mond, Fay Mills and others have been or are regarded as in- 
spired, yet followers of each think Mrs. Mary B. Eddy impious 
because they say she believes her discovery of Christian Science 
a revelation or the result of inspiration. Mrs. Eddy makes no 
claim to any inspiration that might not come to any person 
who would undertake and pursue a course of study such as she 
underwent in her search for light on the power that healed 
her. 

SPECIOUS ORTHODOX REASONING. 

A fair example of the reasoning on which is based the as- 
sumption that the age of miracles ceased with the lives of the 
apostles, is found in Rev. Richard Watson's Biblical and Theo- 
logical Dictionary, London, 1861. In that work the age of mira- 
cles is regarded as having closed with the second century. The 
argument is substantially this: Peter and Paul died between 
the years 66 and 67 of our era and John about the close of the 
first century. They may have imparted the gift of working 
miracles to others who may have survived to the end of the 
century and that the gift was not renewed by its "blessed 
author." 

The defect of this reasoning is plain. It is reasoning only 
so far as the transmission by the three apostles named are 



I40 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

concerned. From that point it is pure assumption that the 
successors did not and could not convey to others what had 
been conveyed to them. 

THE PRAYER GAUGE. 

Some twenty-five years ago Prof. Tyndall proposed a 
prayer test which was at the time made the subject of much 
newspaper joking as the "prayer gauge." Tyndall proposed 
that a certain number of sick persons be selected as subjects 
of prayer for recovery of health and that the number who re- 
covered, under certain conditions, should be regarded as show- 
ing the efficacy or idleness of prayer. 

Among those who took serious notice of this challenge 
was Rev. R. L. Dabney, Professor of Divinity in the Union 
Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church of the South 
and subsequently of the University of Texas. Prof. Dabney de- 
votes a somewhat lengthy chapter to Tyndall's taunt, in which 
he shows that his church believes that prayers are answered 
and the blessings prayed for are granted if the petitioner does 
not "ask amiss." 

SHAKER MARVELS. 

F. W. Evans is the author of a history of the Shakers in 
which several miraculous occurrences are recorded. As Shakers 
are not regarded as Evangelical Christians, to quote their 
miracles would not be fair in this work if they had not the en- 
dorsement of orthodox Protestants. This endorsement was 
strikingly given in the case of "Mother" Ann Lee, when ar- 
raigned for blasphemy in England. She was brought before 
four ministers of the established church on this charge and at 
their request spoke for four hours in foreign tongues. The 



MISCELLANEOUS MYSTERIES. I4I 

clergymen were learned linguists and declared that she 
employed during those four hours seventy-two different 
tongues or dialects. The little volume from which this is taken 
is full of stories of miraculous happenings but, as they all rest 
on Shaker evidence, they are not cited. 

One is so remarkable, however, that it is given for quantity. 
Evans says after the ministers had released Mother Ann and 
those who were arraigned with her the mob of ostensible 
Christians took them to a convenient spot and, having pro- 
vided themselves with stones, they began pelting the Shakers. 
Though within easy range and the mob large, the stones fell 
harmlessly around the prisoners, not one of whom was hit. 
Some of the mob were terror stricken and fled at beholding 
the miracle and the rest slunk away. 

CREDULITY OF SKEPTICS. 
It may seem foreign to this work to mention the story of 
Heinrich Hensoldt. Ph. D., of his visit to the Grand Lama of 
Thibet. He tells it in the October Arena for 1894. It is only 
apropos of the credulity of the incredulous; of those who are 
skeptical on all subjects except their peculiar fads. Hensoldt's 
story is, in brief, that he found the "incarnate Buddha" to be 
a boy apparently about eight years old, "certainly not over 
nine," and he describes him as of wonderful beauty and intel- 
ligence. He continues: 

The Dalai Lama's gaze was that of an adept of the 
highest order, and as I encountered those wonderful 
eyes I knew and felt that I was in the presence of one 
who could read my innermost thoughts. He addressed 
me in my native German and moreover in a dialect 



j . 2 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

which I had not heard for many years and which he 
could not have acquired by any process known to or- 
dinary mortals. This is all the more remarkable when 
it is considered that I had taken special precautions to 
conceal my nationality. 

This is enough of Dr. Hensoldt's wonderful tale, which 
occupies not only several pages in the number here given, but 
extends into other numbers of the magazine. It is somewhat 
remarkable that nobody has to this day questioned Hensoldt's 
veracity in any publication that I have been able to see. 

THE LORD PROVIDED. 
Members of the Christian Church, commonly called 
'Canipbellite," will recall the case of John Smith, one of their 
early missionary preachers in what is now the Central West. 
He told of his reaching Campbell's Ferry, in Kentucky, I 
think, without money with which to pay for carrying himself 
and his horse across the river. While he was meditating what 
kind of appeal he could make to the ferryman, a woman came 
down a by-path, approached him, handed him a silver quarter 
dollar without a word of explanation and retired as silently as 
she came. 

I have been unable to find this anecdote in print, but I 
have heard it so often that I assume it to be familiar to all the 
disciples of Alexander Campbell and that some of them have 
the verified form of the story. Smith always said that the 
Lord provided that quarter because he was informed that the 
ferryman hated preachers in general and Campbellites in par- 
ticular and wouldn't have ferried him without the cash. 



MISCELLANEOUS MYSTERIES. j* ~ 

DICTATION TO OMNIPOTENCE. 

J. Boyd Kinnear, who is a sufficiently respectable writer to 
have his matter printed in the Contemporary Review of De- 
cember, 1879, Vol. XXXVI, page 625, said regarding miracu- 
lous healing: 

It cannot be a breach of natural laws if God should 

effect it (cure) by any laws as yet unknown to man, 

provided they are brought into play with no other 

agency than the motion of matter. 

This is not quoted here for its logic, but to show that be- 
lievers in orthodoxy, in which class Mr. Kinnear appears to be, 
did not all discredit miraculous healing. Mr. Kinnear's logic 
is principally remarkable for its absence in his attempt to dic- 
tate to omnipotence that He must work according to his (Kin- 
near's) specifications and confine himself to the "agency of 
the motion of matter." After thus attempting to limit the in- 
finite, Mr. Kinnear enters upon an extensive argument to show 
that the physical miracles of the Bible were a)l performed in 
harmony with laws not yet discovered by man. 
DISBELIEF AS ATHEISM. 

James Gairdner, who is presumably an orthodox minister, 
says in the Contemporary Review for June, 1876: 

They who do not believe in a direct personal 

agency in the ordinary uniformity can hardly be said 

to have any genuine belief in God, at all. 

This is said in reply to a Dr. Carpenter, who, in the Janu- 
ary number of the same periodical, attempted to explain away 
all supernatural agency in what are considered miracles. Mr. 
Gairdner asks: 



344 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

Is it more superstitious to speak of certain phe- 
nomena, which none of us can understand, as cases ot 
"demoniacal possession" than to call them lunacy? 

WOULD PILLORY HUME. 
David Hume, in giving reasons to a friend why he wrote 
his essay on miracles, says the idea occurred to him while 
conversing with a Jesuit at the college of La Fieche, in France. 
The Jesuit having toM of a recent miracle, Hume disputed him. 
To his argument the Jesuit replied that it could have no solid- 
ity because it operated as much against the Gospels as the 
miracle. This conversation led to a train of thought, of which 
the essay was the result. 

That the essay was regarded as of peculiar force is evident 
from an extract from Bishop Warburton's "railings," as an 
eminent prelate of the Church of England characterized them. 
Warburton said he was minded to 'do justice to his arguments 
against miracles." What his idea of justice was may be judged 
from this, which follows closely on the words quoted above: 
But doeo he deserve this notice? Is he known 
amongst you? If Ms own weight keeps him down I 
should be. sorry to contribute to his advancement ex- 
cept to the pillory. 

What the essay was may be further inferred from the fact 
that it is difficult, according to apparently good authority, to 
find an edition of Hume's essays in England, from which that 
essay has not been omitted, though all good libraries in the 
United States contain unexpurgated editions. This opposition 
from people who scouted the idea that miracles were possible 



MISCELLANEOUS MYSTERIES. j.^ 

in their own day serves to show that their absurdity was as 
great as their intolerance. 

A MORAVIAN EXAMPLE. 
"Tales and Sketches of Christian Life in Different Lands 
and Ages" is the lengthy title to a small volume by Mrs. E. 
Charles, author of "The Schonberg-Cotta Family" and other 
semi-religious works. It depicts the rise of the sect known as 
United Brethren or Maravians. That part of the book opens 
with a conversation between Brother Gregory, the head of the 
sect in Bohemia, nearly forty years after the martyrdom of 
John Huss and his uncle, John Rockyzan, a secret leader of 
the same, though he was, by the choice of the people, arch- 
bishop of Prague, Bohemia, but unconfirmed by the Pope. 
Rockyzan desire? to remain in the church the better to help 
the Brethren, but Gregory argues: 

We have no resource but to recognizo those 
among?!; us whom God has endowed with gifts of gov- 
erning and teaching and to trust Him for the result 
Our high-priest, our master, our bishop, 3ur chief, is 
none else than the living Son of God; our canons His 
Word; our guide and counselor the Eternal Spirit. 

Mrs. Charles' works were all apparently written for the 
entertainment and instruction of youth. Though they do not 
contain much in the way of stories of the miraculous, they con- 
tain much that tends to teach Divine interposition in favor 
of man tor what appear to b? rewards of righteousness or the 
promotion of pious purposes. 

Mrs. Charles' works aie by no means singular in this re- 



146 



PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 



gard. Juvenile literature intended for propagation of faith 
generally contains so much that is miraculous in its nature 
that it became a by-word, among scoffers in the form of jests 
about the wicked boy contradicting the books by escaping all 
manner of perils while violating the Sabbath, while the vir- 
tuous boy of the Sunday school books always died young. 



VARIED MARVELS. 

TJNCLASSED WONDERS TAKEN FROM THE WRITINGS 
OF PIOUS PROTESTANTS AND OTHER AUTHORITIES. 

In "Modern Doubt and Christian Belief" Dr. Christlieb, who 
is described elsewhere, relates an account of miracles that 
may almost be called modern. Dr. Christlieb tells of Hans 
Egede, the first evangelical missionary to Greenland, healing 
several natives, of grievous ailments, by miraculous means. 
He also cites, on a page close to that containing the Green- 
land story, instances of the miraculous provision for two mis- 
sionaries in North America, Spaugenberg and Zeisgeber. They 
were nearly famished while traveling through a wilderness, 
when they came to a clear stream. 

Spangenberg bade his companion get out the ashing tackle 
and cast a line into the stream. Zeisgeber reminded him that 
it w^as the season when the fish had gone seaward and pointed 
to the water, in which not a fish was visible. Spangenberg 
told him to proceed, nevertheless, and he obeyed. The result 
was so successful that it is compared to the miraculous draft 
of fish in the gospel. 

Christlieb also quotes from a memoir of Kieinschmidt, 
published in 1S66, an incident of a Christian convert in South 
Africa, who. in 1858. instantly healed a comrade who was so 
wounded in both legs that he could not walk. The convert 



148 



PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 



b&de him, in the name of Jesus, to arise and walk, which the 
cripple instantly did. 

Orthodox writers, as a rule, seem to have ignored all mod- 
ern miracles. Ecclesiastical authority having once taken the 
ground that the age of miracles had passed, the majority of 
writers and lecturers seem to have bowed to the dogma and 
closed their eyes to what seem to be well authenticated facts. 
When one contemplates the studious efforts of even eminent 
theological teachers and historians to suppress facts which, to 
say the least in their support, are as well authenticated as the 
Gospels, it is no wonder that there is so little in collateral his- 
tory to corroborate the evangelists. 

Some of the most remarkable cases of miracles or wonders 
are related by infidel writers, apparently for the purpose of 
shewing that while they were wonders they were not miracles 
in the sense that they were the result of Divine suspension of 
natural laws or were prod need by special interposition of 
Providence for the occasion. In a book entitled "Supernatural 
Religion," and published by Longmans & Green, London, the 
author, whose name is not disclosed in either of the two vol- 
umes, devotes twenty- five pages to a summary of miracles re- 
lated of and by Christians of later days than the apostles. 
Those attributed to Gregory are the mest marvelous and in 
some respects far surpass any attributed to Jesns. One is that 
two brothers, having quarreled over the proprietary right lo a 
lake, Gregory caused it to dry up a^d become a fertile fieid. In 
another he planted his staff at a spot where a river annually 
overflowed its banks and caused great loss of life and property. 



VARIED MARVELS. I4 g 

The stick took root and became a tree, after which the river 
never over flowed . 

Much space is devoted to the miracles asserted to have 
been wrought by St. Augustine, but in both cases the author 
only quotes to discredit these accounts, while such Christian 
w r riters as Bruce of Glasgow and Fisher of Yale University re- 
fer to "Catholic'' miracles as unworthy of credit. 

Hume in his essay on "Human Understanding of Miracles" 
relates several of the Jansenist. Abbe Paris. These he says 
were proved tc die satisfaction of a large number of French 
cures (pastors) before a bishops' court in Paris under the eye 
of Cardinal Noailles, but Hume calls them impostures. Hume 
was an infidel, but in this was in harmony with many, in fact 
most of Christian authors and preachers. 

The man known as the Abbe Paris was born in 1727 and 
was not a priest. He had received deacon's orders but was not 
satisfied with the papal bull "Unigenitus" and deemed it wrong 
to receive full ordination. He had resigned his patrimony to 
his brother in anticipation of taking orders and hence was very 
poor. He retired to a part of the city inhabited by other very 
poor people and supported himself by making stockings. His 
scanty earnings he shared with the poor, to whom he minis- 
tered in every way in his power. It was generally believed 
that his voluntary privations greatly shortened his life. 

Though history shows that Protestant writers have, ever 
since the Reformation, made great efforts to destroy the belief 
in miracles, that belief has risen among them with great force 
and at comparatively brief intervals. The healings attributed 
to the Abbe Paris may be properly clashed as Protestant, as 



ji-q PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

may also the visions and prophesies of Isabel Vincent in 
France in lGStj. Or' those visions and prophesies little need be 
said here beyond the fact that the pastors of the fugitive and 
persecuted French Protestants believed them to have been in- 
spired, and when a century later the French revolution oc- 
curred it was hailed as the fulfillment of one of her prophesies.. 

A LUTHERAN WITNESS, 
Heinrich Steffens was enough of a literary light to have 
several pages devoted to him in "Outlines of German Litera- 
ture," a book which reviews the work of typical German 
writers. He was won away from Lutheranism by "that nega- 
tive school of German philosophy whose tendency is to 
destroy the foundations of religion," as the compilers of the 
work say. Steffens was reconverted, however, and in his work, 
"How I Became a Lutheran Once More," he says: 

Despite all the progress of science, an obscure be- 
lief in the supernatural underlies all our clearer no- 
tions, induced from observations respecting only the 
ordinary course of events. 

■r 

This experience, founded on acquaintance with 
the ordinary course of events, and most valuable 
in its way, does not warrant us in affirming that 
such laws of nature as we know are absolute 
and supreme Where our own reasonings are con- 
fronted with an event, for which our limited experi- 
ence can assign no adequate cause, it is fair to con- 
clude that, as the cause of the event itself is for us mys- 



VARIED MARVELS. ^ 

terious, so the circumstances attending that event may 
be mysterious also. 



We cannot destroy faith in the supernatural. 
Driven from one place it will reappear in another. It 
might be better to find for it a safe home, a proper 
sphere, and this home, I would suggest, is found in 
Christianity. 

MAN ABOVE NATURE. 
Rev. Lucius Curtis had an article in the Andover Review 
for August, 1S92, on "Man Above Nature," in which he com- 
bats the positions of Spencer, Huxley et id and, after reviewing 
the power manifested by man, says- 

We have now seen that the economy of Nature 
which gives to the highest order of force on a given 
plane the prerogative to rule all the forces of that 
plane by its own law, assigns to man, as having rational 
energy, the prerogative to rule all the forces of his or- 
ganism by the law of rational life. We have seen also 
that this is not the law of any natural force, but a 
spiritual law for the direction of natural forces, and 
that this has sway only as it is freely accepted and 
administered by a personal power through functions 
that transcend those of nature and are spiritual in their 
character. 



INFIDEL TESTIMONY. 



HUXLEY AND LECKY ON THE REALITY OF WONDER- 
FUL CURES. 

Prof. T. H. Huxley, in the Popular Science Monthly of 
September, 1889, in an article oa the same subject, speaks of 
the wonderful work of George Fox, the founder of the Quakers, 
whom he compares to the Apostle Paul for what he did and 
endured and whose veracity and honesty he fully endorses. 
The most wonderful of his works is quoted from his auto- 
biography. It is of the healing of an insane woman for whom 
the medical men could do nothing. She was so violent that it 
required many persons to hold her and a doctor was about to 
"let her blood" when Fox interfered, bade people release her 
and restored her to sanity — instantly, it is implied. The woman 
thus healed is said to have "lived long in the truth." 

The same magazine in April, 1878, quotes Lecky, the his- 
torian, thus: 

There is no contradiction involved in the belief 
that spiritual beings of power and wisdom immeasura- 
bly transcending our own exist, or that, existing, they 
might, by the normal exercise of their powers, perform 
feats as far surpassing the understanding of the most 
gifted of mankind, as the electric telegraph and the 
prediction of an eclipse surpass the faculties of a 
savage. 

This remark of Lecky is applied to a debate in the Prus- 
sian parliament over the Marpingen miracles, but those mira- 
cles, being of the discredited Catholic class, only serve here 



INFIDEL TESTIMONY. jr. 

to show that Lecky was more liberal than his countrymen in 
general toward those whose belief differed from their own. 

The London Saturday Review, from which Lecky's words 
were copied, remarked of miracle-cures that, whatever may be 
thought of them, the records of cures of supposed hydrophobia 
by appeal to the imagination by religious relics, were well 
attested. It quotes Sir James Stephens in attestation of such 
healings, Lecky on other miracles and even Voltaire to the 
same effect. 

SKEPTICS TAXING CREDULITY. 

It will not escape the critical reader that these and nearly 
all other hypotheses advanced by men who wrote several cen- 
turies after the events, draw as heavily upon human credulity 
as do the Gospel accounts of miracles. 

Then these critics, who disbelieve the Gospel as to mira- 
cles, discredit each other by each offering a different hypothe- 
sis. Some seem willing to believe in some of the miracles or 
in the miraculous to a degree. This naturally causes the ques- 
tion: "If a miracle of lesser degree can be wrought, why not 
of any degree? If one can believe in the supernatural in any 
degree, why Dot believe in it to any extent?" It would seem 
reasonable that if what is viewed as natural law could be sus- 
pended to permit the immaculate conception and birth of 
Jesus, it could also be suspended to raise the dead. If the 
maxim of common law is as good in physics or metaphysics as 
in jurisprudence, then either all the Gospel accounts of mira- 
cles are true or none of them are. This maxim, which is the 
crystallization of the wisdom of lawyers, and is founded on 
the observations during centuries, says: "False in one thing, 
false in all." 



TRACTARIAN MIRACLES. 



THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY'S "SKETCHES FROM 
LIFE" CONTAIN THEM. 

A volume of 515 pages, published by the American Tract 
Society in 1871, and entitled "Sketches From Life," contains a 
large number of stories illustrative of the efficacy of prayer. 
In at least two places of the volume the authors of certain 
articles say the age of miracles is past, even though the inci- 
dents related are in the nature, at least, of miracles. One story, 
entitled "The Cut Finger," is either that of a miracle or else- 
It is a falsehood. 

The story is that a boy four years old had the ill luck to 
have one of his fingers cut off in a hay cutter. The mother 
clapped it on and kept it there until a surgeon arrived. The 
doctor bound up the wound in the hope of saving the finger 
and directed that the dressing be not disturbed for six days. 
During that time the child suffered greatly and when the doctor 
removed the bandages the finger dropped off. The mother re- 
placed it and the doctor told her he would call with another 
surgeon soon to see what could be done. They did not arrive 
until twenty-four hours later, when, directed by his senior and 
superior in skill, the doctor again dressed the wound, and more 
skillfully, it is inferred rather than asserted. 

All the while the mother was praying fervently and in- 
cessantly for the restoration of the child whom she had des- 



TACTARIAN MIRACLES. I£ -r 

tined for the pulpit. When again the bandages were removed 
the severed finger was found to have reunited itself to the 
hand, but had not healed straight and the surgeon advised that 
it be amputated. The mother resisted, and when the story was 
written the boy had become a man and approved his mother's 
action. The author of the story intimates the opinion a mira- 
cle was not wrought, but says none could convince the pious 
mother that her prayers had not done more than the skill of 
the surgeons. 

The volume contains in all nearly 200 stories of answers 
to prayers by which those who prayed were relieved of sick- 
ness, debt and other distress; of marvelous conversions of 
criminals and drunkards and even of a pirate who became so 
penitent that he surrendered when, but for hearing a woman 
at prayer on a vessel he had captured, he would have slain the 
whole crew and passengers. 

A sketch of the life of Francis Marion, the rough rider of 
South Carolina, says God saved him from death by shipwreck 
for his greater work, that of aiding in winning independence 
for America. 

Another miracle story is that of Jacob Manfred, whose 
residence and the age in which he lived are unmentioned. 
While wealthy he adopted a friendless boy, who, when he grew 
up, disappeared. Manfred lost his wealth when old age made 
him and his wife decrepit. Just as a rude, unfeeling officer was 
about to take the poor old couple to the workhouse, a stranger 
appeared, announced himself to be the adopted boy who had 
won wealth abroad and returned to provide for his benefactor 
and benefactress in their declining years. 



156 



PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 



Like the majority of the stories related in Mr. Schuh's 
volume, which is mentioned elsewhere in this work, those in 
this sketch book are not so authenticated as to command much 
attention. Were it published by a less responsible or less well 
known concern than the American Tract Society, little heed 
would be paid to them. They are all written in a style that 
shows them to have been intended for juvenile reading, and as 
they all inculcate a belief that prayers are answered by the 
granting of the petitions of suppliants, it seems conclusive evi- 
dence that the Protestant sects that maintain the American 
Tract Society are teaching that the age of miracles is not past. 



A LAYMAN'S MIRACLES. 



VALENTINE GREATR AXES' PEATS AS RECORDED IN 
THE ROYAL SOCIETY MEMOIRS. 
Valentine Greatrakes, who was born in Ireland in 1628, is 
accredited with the miraculous gift of curing the King's evil 
(scrofula) by the combined means of laying on of hands and 
prayer. In the "Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography," 
edited by a number of men whose learning is attested by the 
addenda of M. A., LL.D., etc., to their names, Greatrakes is 
said to have performed many marvelous cures. The article in 
the dictionary which is credited to Birch's Memoirs of the 
Royal Society, says Greatrakes was a man of unimpeachable 
integrity, incapable of perpetrating an imposture. Though he 
cured vast numbers of poor people he failed to heal Lady Con- 
way, though he made a journey to England for the purpose. 
He did not exercise his power for gain, as he had an ample 
estate, which was generally crowded with people seeking his 
aid after he made it generally known that he possessed such 
wonderful powers. His practice fell into disrepute in England 
in 1666, after his examination before the Royal Society, and 
though he survived until about 1690, the chronicler of the 
society says no more was heard of him after 1666. The account 
does not say at what time Greatrakes began to exercise his 
powers, but leaves it to be inferred, from the fact that he first 
communicated his belief in himself to his wife. Let it be as- 
sumed that this was when he was thirty years old, or in 1658, 
and it would appear that he must have practiced in the neigh- 
borhood of eight years. 



LIMITING GOD'S POWER. 



PECULIAR THEORY OF FRANCES POWER COBBE ON 
ANSWER TO PRAYER. 

Frances Power Cobbe, who has published several volumes 
on moral and religious subjects within a few years, issued in 
3 883 a volume entitled "Religious Duty." In this is a chapter 
devoted to prayer, in the opening of which she repeats what 
she said in her •"Theory of Morals,'' viz: "That the law of 
spirit is that light and strength are bestowed on man by God 
according as the latter places himself further from or nearer 
to their source." She then proceeds: 

The plant which is sickly, weak and white, growing 
in the darkness, acquires health and verdure when we 
bring it into the sunshine. The magnetic bar which 
has lost its power regains it when we hang it in the 
plane of the meridian. Thus (whatever other prayer 
may be;, the prayer for spiritual good is the direct 
mode of obtaining assistance to our virtue, in accord- 
ance with the fixed laws of Providence. 
* * * 

It will be seen here that I assume it to be proved 
that there is an actual answer given by God to our re- 
quests for His assistance. I assume that the strength 
which comes to us in prayer is not merely a subjective 
phenomenon, the strength acquired by the will by its 
own act of excercise. * * * * * * * * * 



LIMITING GOD'S POWER. T r g 

There is a natural supply for spiritual as for corporeal 
wants, so we have spiritual facilities to lay hold on 
God and supply spiritual wants. 
This last sentence the lady attributes to Theodore Parker, 

in a footnote. After arguing the correctness of these views 

she says: 

All this is natural, normal. It is not a miracle that 
the Omnipresent is close to us, that the Omniactive 
moves our hearts. It is not strange that the Infinite 
Father, who bears us in his everlasting arms, should 
supply the cravings of our immortal souls while He 
feeds the ravens and gives the young lions their prey. 
It would be a miracle if it were otherwise. 

The argument, then, stands thus: He who doubts 
that God hears nrayer, denies that we have proof of 
the fact. But what proof would satisfy him? If he say 
"None/' this would imply that there is an essential 
absurdity in the case, but we must call on him to point 
out the absurdity since we cannot see it. But if he ad- 
mit that the thing is not, in itself, absurd and self- 
contradictory, then it seems to me he cannot ask any 
other proof than exactly that which abounds, — name- 
ly, the unanimous testimony of spiritual persons to the 
efficacy of prayer. 
The gifted authoress carries out this idea, but confines it 

strictly to prayer for spiritual gifts — the prayer for light and 

grace and says : 

To the soul which has reached that stage of spirit- 
ual life wherein such culmination of worship takes 



j6o PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

place, it is revealed that God does actually hear, accept 
and bless, ay, in a certain sense (if we may dare sym- 
bolize His awful nature) desire the prayer of His child. 
After this and much more of evidence that she has a very 
full appreciation of the majesty, sublimity and omniscience of 
God, Miss Cobbe on the next page proceeds to put a limit on 
the power of Omnipotence thus: 

Does philosophy warrant us to expect that God will 
grant any prayer for physical good, — for abundant har- 
vests, favorable weather, recovery from sickness or so 
on? 

This question she answers in the negative in several pages 
in which she employs arguments that, were one to take the 
trouble to remodel them, would be equally forcible against her 
position that God hears and answers prayer for spiritual good. 
She argues that to answer such prayers would be to make His 
laws operate unequally and hence unjustly, which is not to be 
considered. In fortification of this position she says "prayer 
begins where science stops and as science advances prayer re- 
treats." 

Miss Cobbe's orthodoxy, in this respect, is very evident 
and she admits that God made everything and governs every- 
thing, but still denies that He has any other power over the 
physical world than that indicated in those laws of nature of 
which man is informed. That is not her way of expressing the 
opinion. She employs some very subtle reasoning, based upon 
what she knows, in an effort to prove that God has no powers 
of which human philosophers are unaware. Miss Cobbe was 
not orthodox in the usually accepted sense. She underwent 



LIMITING GODS POWER. 



161 



great tribulation in consequence of her meditations on religious 
subjects and, after reading and studying widely on the subject 
and many phases of it, she became an ardent admirer of the 
late Theodore Parker and published an edition of his writings. 
Miss Cobbe is an Irish woman of high education and seems to 
have inherited ample means to enable her to pursue her studies 
all her life. Though she is not an orthodox Protestant, these 
extracts from her writings are quoted for what they are worth. 



PHILOSOPHERS' OPINIONS. 



SOME EMINENT SCIENTISTS WHO HAVE REBUKED 
SCIENTIFIC SKEPTICISM. 

In the course of my researches I have consulted few works 
that treated of spiritualism, but have avoided them as foreign 
to my purpose. By a singular error in the transposition of 
figures in a memorandum of library numbers I got a little work 
by Alfred Russell Wallace, an English author of some note, 
"On Miracles and Modern Spiritualism." The first thing that 
struck me in this book was a page of quotations, which I copy, 
viz: 

A presumptuous skepticism that rejects facts with- 
out examination of their truth is, in some respects, 
more injurious than unquestioning credulity. — Hum- 
boldt. 

One good experiment is of more value than the in- 
genuity of a brain like Newton's. Facts are more use- 
ful when they contradict, than when they support, re- 
ceived theories. — Sir Humphrey Davy. 

The perfect observer in any department of science 
will have his eyes, as it were, opened, that they may 
be struck at once by any occurrence which . according 
to received theories, ought not to happen, for these are 
the facts which serve as clues to new discoveries. — Sir 
John Herschell. 



PHILOSOPHERS' OPINIONS. 



163 



Before experience itself can be used with advan- 
tage, there is one preliminary step to make which de- 
pends entirely upon ourselves: It is the absolute dis- 
missal and clearing of the mind of all prejudice, and 
the determination to stand or fall by the result of a 
direct appeal to facts in the first instance, and of strict 
logical deduction from them afterwards. — Sir John 
Herschell. 

With regard to the miracle question, I can only 
say that the word ''impossible" is not, to my mind, ap- 
plicable to matters of philosophy. That the possibili- 
ties of nature are infinite is an aphorism with which I 
am wont to worry my friends. — Prof. Huxley. 
I cannot resist the impulse to here remark that those 
clerymen and other writers who have employed the methods 
that skeptical philosophers have used against all miracles, in 
their battling against the belief in modern thaumaturgy, that 
it would be better for their reputations as logicians were they 
to also adopt the liberality of the "infidel philosophers." 

Mr. Wallace devotes much attention to Hume's account of 
the Jansenist miracles and exposes some glaring contradic- 
tions in his work. Placing the contradictory passages suffi- 
ciently near to make their incongruity striking, he shows the 
"infidel" historian and philosopher to have indulged in what 
is characterized in the American trick politician as "faking." 



DIVINE WRATH. 



WHAT ORTHODOX PEOPLE BELIEVE OF GOD'S VEN- 
GEANCE ON INFIDELS. 

Take up a volume of sermons by T. DeWitt Talmage and see 
if you do not find evidences that he believed in modern mira- 
cles. In a volume published in 1886 is one on the topic: "Why 
are Satan and Sin Permitted?" In this he expresses the 
opinion that God's interposition brought about the downfall 
of "Boss"' Tweed of New York City and the death by accident 
of William the Conqueror. In the same sermon he speaks of 
the establishment of an infidel college in that indefinite region, 
"the far West. It languished a short time and then the Pres- 
byterians gained possession of it, and Talmage attributes the 
failure and change of ownership to God's influence if not direct 
interposition. 

This recalls what was uttered from many pulpits after the 
massacre at New Ulm, Minnesota, during the Indian war in the 
fifth decade of this century. New Ulm was settled by German 
infidels, who made a law that no minister of the Gospel should 
be suffered to remain in that place. When the Indians de- 
stroyed the town Christian ministers in large numbers, and in 
many states, said God used the Indians as instruments of his 
wrath to rebuke or revenge the infidelity of the people who 
wouldn't suffer a church to be built or a minister to reside in 
the town. This sentiment was expressed at the meeting of the 
Dakola Mission conference of the M. E. Church in 1884, and 
was imt disputed by any of the assembled ministers. 



MARK OF ARETHUSA. 



A PROTESTANT HISTORIAN ACCEPTS ONE ACCOUNT OF 
POST-APOSTOLIC MIRACLES. 

Millman's History of Christianity, pp. 25 to 35, contains 
an account of Mark of Arethusa being accused of having de- 
stroyed a Jewish temple and being ordered to rebuild it. As 
Mark was as poor as other early Christian apostles, the order 
could not be carried out, but the Jews undertook the work 
themselves. While they were engaged in clearing the ruins a 
series of explosions occurred which drove the workers out re- 
peatedly and defeated them in their efforts to rebuild. 

On page 27 the learned historian indulges in reflections on 
the relative credibility of accounts of miracles addressed to 
terror and those that appeal to calmer emotions. It is evident 
that his conclusion is in favor of the latter class, while he does 
not discredit the other. Further along in his work, page 165 
and beyond, he quotes Augustine and Ambrose to the effecT 
that miracles had ceased during their early days, but he also 
shows that both of these fathers professed to have wrought 
miracles. 

In doing this Millman, like White and some others, seems 
to forget that they have proved both sides of the question, as 
he expresses no doubt of the genuineness of the history he 
quotes. Those who argue after that fashion may never have 



i66 



PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 



read the rule that what proves equally well for both sides 
proves nothing. 

In this case Millman's position is only valuable as the tes- 
timony of an adverse witness giving unwilling evidence that 
he and his confreres make an exception to what they would 
have people believe is the invariable rule, whenever they find 
miracles that strike their fancy. 



A MORMON MIRACLE. 



A DAY OF FASTING RESTORES HEALTH WHERE THE 
DOCTORS ADMIT THAT THEY ARE POWERLESS. 

As I have included in this collection of wonders a few 
miracles that I have classed as non-religious and some from 
the Shakers, who, being Unitarians, are not considered Evan- 
gelical, I may also he indulged in making a Mormon miracle 
a feature of the work The story reached me after my first 
"copy 5 ' was in the hands of the printer and I have not had 
time to get the particulars or have the main story verified by 
the authorities. My informant is the person who taught the 
public school in Annabella, Sevier county, Utah; a non-Mor- 
mon and not a member of any other church. The story in 
brief is this: 

Mrs. Hattie Stewart had given birth to a child in 1896 and 
all went apparently well. After she had been confined to her 
bed six weeks I first heard of the case on the death of the 
child. I visited Mrs. Stewart at the request of her friends and 
found her greatly wasted and almost in a state of exhaustion. 
She lingered under a doctor's care nearly three months and 
then the physicians gave up the case as one for whom their 
skill was of no avail. 

At this point the bishop and elders of Annabella began 
visiting Mrs. Stewart and appointed a fast day for the purpose 



j 68 PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

of benefiting her. I heard of the appointment and gladly joined 
in the effort, knowing it could do no harm to either patient or 
fasters and feeling that if prayer could be efficacious it would 
be as likely to be so in her case as any. I explained the fast 
day and its purpose to the children and they became enthusias- 
tic in the cause. 

When the day arrived, I think it was the day after I an- 
nounced it to them, fully two-thirds of my thirty odd pupils 
came to school fasting. They didn't even drink water, and out 
of the 350 adult inhabitants or thereabouts, fully 300 fasted 
half the day and 250 until 4 p. m., the hour appointed. 

Among the few non-Mormons in the village there were 
some who secretly scouted the idea that the fasting could have 
any effect and some declared that the fasters would harm them- 
selves. Though I remained there several months after the 
event, I heard of no ill effects, while I know that Mrs. Stewart 
recovered her health and the people of Annabella know it and 
believe her recovery is due to their prayers. 

Although the extraordinary events recorded in this chapter 
cannot be called Protestant, they are so interesting in them- 
selves and are so nearly miraculous as to merit a place in this 
work as contradicting the assumption that the age of miracles 
is past. 



WHAT ARE MIRACLES? 



SOME DEFINITIONS AND EXPLANATIONS OF THE TERM 
BY DIFFERENT AUTHORITIES. 

Lexicographers define miracles as events or effects con- 
trary to the established course of things or the known laws of 
nature; supernatural events or events transcending the ordin- 
ary laws by which the universe is governed. 

Amcng the ablest defenders of the miraculous origin of 
Christianity is Archbishop Trench of Dublin. On page 9 of his 
"Notes on the Miracles of Our Lord," a work republished in 
the United States by the Tibbals Book Company of New York, 
the Archbishop thus defines a miracle: 

An extraordinary Divine casualty, and not that 
ordinary which we acknowledge everywhere and in 
everything; belongs then to the essence of a miracle; 
powers of God other than those which have always 
been working; such indeed as most seldom or never 
have been working before. The unresting activity of 
God which at other times hides and conceals itself be- 
hind the veil of what we term natural laws, does in the 
miracle unveil itself; it steps out from its concealment 
and the hand which works is laid bare. Beside and be- 
yond the ordinary operations of nature, higher powers 
(higher, not as coining from a higher source, but as 
bearing upon higher end) intrude and make themselves 



jy Q PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

felt even at the very springs and sources of her power. 
On page 11 he further speaks of miracles thus: 

But while the miracle is not thus nature, so neither 
is it against nature. That language, however uncom- 
mon, is wholly unsatisfactory, which speaks of these 
wonderful works of God as violations of natural law. 
Beyond nature, beyond and above the nature which we 
know, they are. but not contrary to it. 

What says Christian Science of miracles? On page 582 of 
Science and Health they are defined as ''divinely natural." On 
page 28 miracles are treated of as in accordance with God's 
law, a demonstration of "the superiority of -spiritual power 
over material resistance." On page 249 miracles are said to 
be impossible in science, which teaches that the highest mani- 
festation of life or truth is not supernatural, but from the 
divine nature whose laws are superior to material laws, and 
miracles are but the natural demonstrations of this Divine 
power." 

Christian Science holds tdat the miracles of Jesus did not 
especially belong to a dispensation that has ended, but that 
they illustrate a divine principle that is always operative, but 
which human theories cannot explain or interpret. 

AFRAID OF A WORD. 
In most of the works from which I have quoted or to which 
I have referred as of orthodox Rrotestant authority, there seems 
to be a studied avoidance of the word "miracle" as applied to 
modem events that come under the definitions quoted herein. 
It seems to have become a settled habit with those who defend 



WHAT ARE MIRACLES? jyj 

the miraculous origin of Christianity, yet declare that the age 
of miracles is past. In the course of an argument in support 
of the miracles of the Gospel against those who assailed them, 
Archbishop Trench says on page 49 of his work on "The Mira- 
cles of Our Lord:"' 

The existence of false cycles of miracles should no 
more cast suspicion upon all or cause to doubt those 
which present themselves with marks of the time, than 
the appearance of a parhelion fore-running the sun 
should cause us to deny that he was traveling up from 
beneath the horizon, for which, rather, it is an evidence. 
This argument the prelate seems to think powerful against 
the heathen philosophers and those modern infidels who em- 
ploy the alleged miracles of Apollonius of Tyana to discredit 
the Gospel accounts of those performed by Jesus of Nazareth. 
The learned prelate does not seem to have foreseen that his 
argument would ever be employed by those whom the priests 
of his church now 7 condemn as deluders or the deluded. 



WHY THEY ARE INCENSED. 



EVIDENCES THAT FEAR, NOT DISBELIEF, CAUSES AT- 
TACKS ON CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

The Church would never have attacked Christian Science 
if its author had confined her efforts to the healing of disease, 
and the doctors would not have assailed it had she simply 
labored to teach a new theory in religion or organize a new 
sect. Doctors and ministers do not agree well, as classes, but 
as Mrs. Eddy has invaded the fields of both they join forces to 
attack her. The ministers are rather less unmanly than the 
doctors in their attacks because they generally make open as- 
saults, while the doctors act covertly, through legislatures, 
coroners' juries and through the bigotry of the ignorant. 

In this the history of Christian Science resembles the early 
history of Christianity. If Jesus had not attempted to reform 
the religion of His day the priests would not have denounced 
Him. The priests and lawyers of that day possessed nearly all 
the learning and they seem to have been afflicted with fear like 
that which is taking possession of the priests and doctors of 
to-day. The physicians of apostolic days do not seem to have 
joined in the persecution of Christ and his followers. The doc- 
tors with whom Jesus disputed in the synagogue were not phy- 
sicians, but teachers — doctors of the law — or lawyers like Saul 
of Tarsus. It is fair to assume that Jesus did not interfere with 



WHY THEY ARE INCENSED. J7 ~ 

their financial interests in healing the sick and raising the 
dead or they would have aided in raising the mob that insisted 
on Jesus being punished under the civil law for treason, when 
the real complaint against him was heresy, of which the Roman 
law took no jurisdiction. The heresy consisted of efforts to 
make the Jewish religion practical instead of theoretical; to 
make it a religion of deeds as well as of creed. 

There is nothing your average priest, preacher or minister 
dreads and hates more than an attempt to reduce religion to 
practice, unless it is the person who makes the attempt and de- 
mands that the preachers exemplify their sincerity by their 
practices. This is about as true of the present as of the past. 
The reasons they do not instigate mobs to persecute Mrs. Eddy 
and her followers are that the people are not as easily led as 
they were in those old days; that the clergy are not united 
either as to what constitutes heresy or what constitutes true 
religion, and that the laws of the land forbid. The last reason 
is the result of the too free exercise of priestly influence in 
causing persecution for opinion's sake and is not attributable 
to the reduction to practice of that precept of Jesus that the 
greatest of virtues is charity. 



SCOURGED TO THE PULPIT. 



A NONOGENARIAN MINISTER WHOM GOD CONSTRAINED 
TO ENTER THE PULPIT. 

Rev. J. C. Holbrook, D. D., LL.D., now over ninety years 
old. was for more than half a century a Congregational minis- 
ter. He was the first editor of the Congregational Herald of 
Chicago, where he was also pastor of a church during two years 
or more. He issued in 1897 "Recollections of a Nonogenarian," 
in which is incorporated an autobiography. In this the vener- 
able divine, who has for several years lived in retirement in 
Stockton, California, says his mother's prayers caused him to 
become a minister. He describes his career up to his entry of 
the ministry and says "though the answer (to her prayers) was 
delayed awhile, were at last answered and for that I shall be 
ever grateful to her and to Him who answers prayer." 

Further along he tells of his success as a young man in 
politics and the probability of its continuance had he con- 
tinued. "But God had other and better things in regard to me." 
And in returning to the subject he repeats: "As I have said, 
God had something better for me than a political career." 

On page 42 he says of his membership in the church of Dr. 
Lyman Beecher of Boston: "It was part of God's appointed 
preparation of me for my subsequent professional career." 

On page 53, in treating of the successful establishment of 
an insane asylum at Brattleboro, Vt, in which enterprise he 
was an active agent, he says: 

But this is only one of a multitude of illustrations 



SCOURGED TO THE PULPIT. x « <- 

which history affords that, in the providence of God, 
vast and beneficial results have flowed from what 
seemed to human eyes very insignificant beginnings. 
Let us not "despise the day of small things." No 
benevolent act, however small, is performed in vain, 
and we may confidently expect the blessing of God on 
any enterprise undertaken for His glory and the good 
of mankind. 

Dr. Holbrook has the deep satisfaction of having been the 
lirst person to introduce Henry Ward Beecher to the public. 
That was after his return to Vermont from Boston, when, after 
engaging 0. S. Fowler to lecture on temperance, that gentle- 
man, who had as yet no fame, recommended his college class- 
mate, Beeolier, to whom Mr. Holbrook paid $10, the first money 
young Beecher had ever earned as a lecturer. 

Some passages in Dr. Holbrook's book are very affecting, 
especially those in which he tells of the death of his sons and 
his first wife; his suffering from nostalgia; his determination 
to return to the East from Davenport, Iowa, whither he had 
migrated with the intention of becoming a farmer. Regarding 
all this, after saying he decided to return to the East, he says: 
But such was not the will of God. He had been 
preparing me for a life-work different from that I an- 
ticipated, and in part for this purpose broke up my 
family. 

And now occurred, in accordance with His plans, 
one of the most important providential interpositions 
in my affairs, of which I have so many to record, and 
which changed my whole subsequent life. 



I7 £ PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 

Dr. Hoi brook then tells how he was Ted to Dubuque by a 
circuitous route and a rare combination of circumstances that 
culminated in a call to the pastorate of a Presbyterian church; 
its change to Congregational; his success there from 1842 until 
1852; his marriage to his second wife, to whom he says he was 
"most providentially directed, as fifty-two years of experience 
in our after united life have abundantly proven." 

The room to give all of the venerable doctor's views on 
special providences cannot be spared here. These extracts are 
sufficient to show that one eminently respectable Congrega- 
tionalism who has heard two generations of Beechers preach; 
whose devotion to his church has earned him his learned titles 
from two different colleges, believes in the miraculous and has 
left enduring evidence of that belief. As the book was pub- 
lished at the request of the Monday Club of San Francisco and 
vicinity, which ciub is composed of orthodox ministers; which 
request was supplemented by like requests from other minis- 
ters, it cannot but be regarded as sound orthodoxy. One rea- 
son why so much space is devoted to it here is that a minister 
of the denomination to which Dr. Holbrook belongs, and ap- 
parently an intimate friend of the venerable divine, recently 
indulged in a lengthy attack upon Christian Science and de- 
rided its author as "ill-brained and ill-trained" for expressing 
opinions that to an impartial reader would seem less incon- 
sistent with reverence for the omniscience and loving kindness 
of God than Dr. Holbrook's idea that God deprived his first 
wife and second child of life in order to constrain him to devote 
himself to preaching the Gospel. 



DEBT PAID MIRACULOUSLY. 



It would appear from the character of some books that are 
published for the use of preachers that they are expected to 
believe stories of the miraculous even without the verification, 
prescribed by good theological authorities who doubt. "Anec- 
dotes Illustrative of New Testament Texts" is the title of one 
volume of the "Clerical Library," published by A. C. Armstrong 
<fe Son, New York, "for the clergy and students of all denomina- 
tions." To judge from the appearance of the volume I found 
in a public library, it had been thoroughly used by one clergy- 
man, who marked several passages. No name of author or 
compiler appears and few of the anecdotes have even the name 
of those to whom they are attributed as experiences. 

In this volume are numerous stories of answer to prayer 
wherein the petitioners were delivered from evils of various 
kinds. One, attributed to Rev. Frederick Robinson, residence 
not given, tells how he escaped a flogging at school by the 
power of prayer, and this is attributed to Dr. Krummacher of 
Elberfeld, Prussia, who has written considerable theological 
matter: 

A poor man in the neighborhood was sitting at his 
door early in the morning, weeping. His heart cried to 
heaven, for he was expecting an officer to distrain him 
for debt. While thus sitting a little bird fluttered into 



i;8 



PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 



his cottage. The man closed the door and caught the 
bird, which at once began to sing what he imagined to 
be the melody of his favorite hymn, "Fear thou not 
when darkness reigns/' and the thought comforted him. 
Suddenly a knock came at the door and a servant 
of a lady came in to recover the escaped bird. In a few 
minutes after he surrendered the sweet singer, the ser- 
vant returned with the thanks of his mistress and a 
sum of money. When the officer came the debtor 
handed him the money — the exact amount of the debt, 
saying: "Here is the amount. God has sent it to me. 
Leave me in peace." 



BELIEF IN 1899. 



MOODY AND CALIFORNIAN CLERGYMEN ON PRAYER 

FOR RAIN, 

The great valleys of California suffered a severe drouth 
during the grain season of 1898 and farmers lost vast amounts. 
The winter of 1898-9 threatened another season of drouth. Only 
five inches of water had fallen for the season 1897-8 and up to 
the close of 1898 no more had fallen at the point of average 
precipitation. 

Prayers went up in nearly all parts of the state for rain, 
but what fell previous to March 15, 1899, was only enough to 
aggravate the fears and anxieties of the farmers. On the 15th 
rain began falling and continued to fall in generous volume 
until the average was exceeded by about 10 per cent. By the 
close of March the despondency of the farmers and business 
men, who are dependent more upon agricultural success than 
on any other industry, was turned to hope and joy. 

On the 25th of March the Sunday Bulletin of San Francisco 
published the views of a number of clergymen on the efficacy 
of prayer for rain. D. L. Moody, the world-renowned evan- 
gelist, was among those interviewed, he being at that time en- 
gaged in revival work in the California metropolis. Mr. Moody 
is thus quoted by Miriam Michelson, a Jewish woman, who is a 
very attractive special writer on that paper: 

"My boy wanted a bicycle," said Mr. Moody. "He 

coaxed me for it. He got it. If it had been a racehorse 

he wanted, he should not have had it. God is truly like 



i8o 



PROTESTANT MIRACL.ES. 



a father to us. He likes to be teased. Of course, his 
judgment is perfect, though, and in that respect my 
parallel to an earthly father will not hold. You think, 
perhaps, that if you intend to withhold something from 
your child, that all his coaxing will be of no avail. But 
you're mistaken. Ask, ask, of course." 

The great revivalist sat alone upon the platform, 
facing the audience, at the close of yesterday's meet- 
ing. For two hours the big church had been filled to 
overflowing with the crowd. Yet the people filed up 
and past him, grasping his hand and speaking a few 
words to him. He was at his best just then, his short, 
stout body bent forward, his large, fat hand shaking 
cordially the many hands held up to him, his homely, 
kindly face in its frame of white hair falling down upon 
them all, even upon the six little Chinese maidens, new 
Christians, whom he blessed and told to "go back to 
China and spread the light." 

"The thing to do is to pray," he said, returning to 
the rain question. "Why not? My little grandson has 
been at the point of death for nine weeks. All over 
the United States I have had people praying for him. 
He is going to recover. Why not pray for rain, then? 

"Pray, I tell you! Why, I pray for everything, for 
anything I want, spiritual or material. I pray for every- 
body. I'll pray for you." 

And there was an emphasis on the "you" that 
made it unnecessary for Mr. Moody to add the word 
"even." 



BELIEF IN 1899. . jgj 

PRESBYTERIAN VIEW. 
To Rev. John Hemphill, D. D., of Calvary Presbyterian 
Church, is attributed the view here set forth: 

Dr. Hemphill declares that it is not a miracle if 
rain be sent in answer to prayer. 

"It is not the inversion or the change in a natural 
law. There is nc law of Nature, or rather there is a 
higher law, the law of God, which sends the rain or 
withholds it. All this modern materialistic bathos of 
the scientists has nothing, absolutely, to stand upon. 
Tyndall probed and probed, and at the end of his re- 
searches he was honest enough to say that he could 
find nothing in favor of the theory of spontaneous gen- 
eration. If you admit one miracle, you admit all. There 
are great minds that refuse to admit the miracles. 
There are minds as great, such as Minton's that be- 
lieve in the miracles. I believe with Minton. My faith 
is absolutely unshaken by such men as Huxley and 
Renan. I prayed for rain in my church. It was as 
natural a thing to do as it is for my grandchild to beg 
me for something he wants." 

John A. B. Wilson, D. D., of Howard-Street M. E. Church, 
is thus quoted in answer to the inquiry: "Do you believe in 
prayer for rain?" 

I most certainly believe in praying for rain. "Ask, 
and it shall be given you." In my church we prayed for 
rain last week. In my son's church in Pasadena they 
prayed for rain. There was not the sign of a cloud in 



182 



PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 



the sky. There was not the slightest indication of ' 
rain. And yet rain fell, that very night. 

I absolutely believe the rain fell in answer to 
prayer. And I am willing to go on record to that effect. 

"A miracle, doctor." 

"Look here, daughter," said Dr. Wilson. "Either we've got 
to believe in God and in the Bible, or we do not. If we do, we've 
got to accept God's word and his directions as given in the 
Bible." 

Rev. William Rader, pastor of the Third Congregational 
Church, would not commit himself on the subject. He admitted 
having prayed for rain in his church, but could not be induced 
to be more positive than to say the necessity for miracles had 
passed and with it the age of miracles. Here are what I deem 
his most positive words: 

I am not prepared to say dogmatically that a mira- 
cle will be vouchsafed, a complete change in the laws 
of nature, in answer to our prayers. The miracles of 
Christ were, so to speak, His credentials. The necessity 
for miracles and their operation is a thing of the past. 
Six of the most noted clergymen were interviewed and of 
these only two, one Jewish Rabbi, Dr. Voorsanger, and one Con- 
gregationalism Dr. George C. Adams of the First Church, were 
positive in discouraging prayers for rain. Only one of those 
who expressed belief in the efficacy and advisability of prayer 
for rain would say he attributed the generous precipitation to 
God having pitied California farmers and granted the petitions 
of those who importuned him for rain. 



WHY DO THEY PRAY? 



A QUESTION THAT MINISTERS OF PROTESTANT 
CHURCHES SHOULD ANSWER. 

Those who attend any orthodox church, if the} r pause to 
analyze the prayers offered therein, will wonder why they are 
offered. If it is true, as the average Protestant authority in- 
sists, that the age of miracles ceased with the death of the im- 
mediate successors of Peter and John, prayers are idle. Answers 
to prayers must come by supernatural mediums and the an- 
swers must hence be miraculous. Now if the suppliant does not 
believe that miracles can occur, he wastes his time when pray- 
ing for the miraculous. 

Do these daily, weekly or semi-weekly prayers call for 
miracles? If they do not, why does the Rev. Dr. Duguid be- 
seech the Lord to bless the Sunday School of his church "in an 
especial manner?" This, according to my experience, is a 
favorite form of petition. If they do not believe in miracles, 
why do they pray to the Lord to endow the revivalist, who 
comes to re-awaken sluggish Christians and convert sinners, 
with especial power — inspiration for the work? 

If they do not believe God will work a miracle in granting 
their petitions for relief to the oppressed; for the triumph of a 
just cause in war or politics; for wisdom and the spirit of jus- 
tice to pervade the minds of legislators, executive officers and 



1 84 



PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 



magistrates, why do they continue to repeat the petitions? I 
cannot resist the temptation to here comment on the strife 
that usually occurs before the complete organization of legis- 
latures, and between ministers of the Gospel, for the appoint- 
ment as chaplain. If, as many ministers say in private con- 
versation, that the average legislative body is past praying for, 
why do they strive for the employment of offering idle, per- 
functory supplications? If the average impromptu prayers of 
sectarian ministers do not call for miracles they mean nothing. 
If the printed prayers prescribed in the book of that church, so 
many of whose ministers like to be called priests of the holy 
Catholic Church, do not call for miracles they call for the exer- 
cise of great charity toward those who repeat them, much as 
the Thibetan grinds out a prayer from his "mill" just as their 
forefathers did and largely because they did. 



CONCLUSION. 



Lest any should consider this work incomplete because it 
contains no argument in favor of metaphysical healing as 
against the agnostics and materialists who discredit all belief 
in the miraculous, I simply remind readers that it was no part 
of my object. As a rule skeptics, "liberals," agnostics and 
other free thinkers have generally shown a willingness to ac- 
cord to those whose teachings differ from them the same liberty 
they claim. If any argument is to be made against those whom 
the orthodox people regard as unevangelical or infidel, it must 
be made by others, or if made by me it must be done after I 
have received more light. My opinion is that, so far as mere 
argument goes, they are far more consistent and logical than the 
orthodox Christians. The only ground on which the latter argue 
against, the credibility of present-day miracles is that of want 
of necessity, because the word of God is before men to read and 
learn for themselves. I simply wish to remind those who make 
the argument that the word of God was before the Pharisees 
and the Jews in general when Jesus was working miracles be- 
fore their eyes. The Pharisees were the best educated of all 
the Jews and Saul of Tarsus was one of the most brilliant 
scholars of that sect, yet it required one of the most striking 
of ail miracles to convert Saul, the persecutor, into Paul, the 
promoter, of Christianity. I would also remind them that if 
God is no respecter of persons He will save the poor and ignor- 
ant as well as the rich and the learned. There are millions of 
ignorant and poor and there are millions more of purse-proud 
and educated bigots whom nothing short of miracles could de- 
tach from the systems of worship and the mere mannerisms 



i86 



PROTESTANT MIRACLES. 



of religion. I would also remind the orthodox believer in 
ancient and scorner of modern miracles that, according to 
their belief, there is less chance of salvation for those willfully 
ignorant of the things celestial than for the ignorant who have 
had less opportunity to learn than have the wealthy, and hence 
that the wealthy and intelligent bigot needs miracles for his 
regeneration more than do the lowly. 

It is no part of my purpose to argue the truth of Christian 
Science here. I am not authorized to speak for the church that 
teaches it. My argument is that self-styled orthodoxy has no 
warrant for assuming that the age of miracles is past; that its 
devotees are inconsistent in so doing while they pray for God 
to interpose His might to confer benefits upon them or free 
them from evil; thai they stultify themselves when they say 
no miracles are performed now and in the same breath, per- 
haps, tell of blessings bestowed upon them or others by mys- 
terious means. I argue that they really believe in miracles 
while theoretically disbelieving, just as they theoretically be- 
lieve in taking no heed for the morrow, etc., but practically 
believe in devoting six days of the week to the acquisition of 
wealth and generally infringe a little on the other day, taking 
heed all the time for the future. I argue that they believe in 
miracles brought about by their own prayers and those of 
other members of the denominations to which they belong, 
but discredit those of other churches and especially those which 
Catholics believe in. Finally I argue that their own acts show 
that they believe that they disbelieve in present-day miracles, 
but, as was said by a droll commentator on a similar subject, 
"in believing that they believe they only believe they believe/' 



POSTSCRIPT. 



Since most of the matter contained in this work was 
placed in the printers' hands, the anniversary of the capture 
of Manila by Admiral Dewey's fleet has* been celebrated. At 
the celebrations many of the orations were delivered by clergy- 
men of orthodox Protestant churches and in nearly all such 
clergymen offered invocations. In both oration and prayer the 
extraordinary character of the victory was, in almost every 
instance, attributed to the interposition of God in favor of the 
Americans. It is somewhat remarkable that among the clergy- 
men so officiating and thus attributing to Dewey's victory the 
character of a miracle, more than one stultified himself. 
Among them were men who but a few months or weeks before 
had denounced Christian Scientists as either frauds or the 
dupes of a fraud because they believe that God interposes His 
beneficence and omniscience between man and all kinds of sin 
and suffering when man complies with God's laws and lives in 
harmony therewith. 

It may be said that I have only newspaper testimony for 
this statement of the attitude of the clergy to miracles in this 
instance. 'That would be true, but ample time has lapsed since 
that celebration for those ministers who may have been in- 
correctly Quoted to have corrected the errors, but no such cor- 
rections have come to my notice. Newspaper men of experi- 
ence will accept this as the strongest endorsement that could 
be given of the correctness of the reports, because it has be- 
come almost a journalistic proverb that ministers always dis- 
puted reports of their utterances when their own words were 
Quoted in refuting them or in placing them in inconsistent 
positions. 



RECAPITULATION. 



This book contains the results of several months of dili- 
gent search among the writings of eminent Protestant clergy- 
men, authors, teachers and learned laymen who dissent from 
the opinion that the age of miracles had passed away long 
before the Reformation. It has been the object of a class to 
create the impression that the belief that miracles no longer 
occurred was general, if not universal, among Protestants of 
all denominations. 

In this volume I have collected facts and opinions from the 
writings of men whose names entitle them to respect, which 
facts and opinions show that events which are usually classed 
as miracles have occurred in every century and nearly .every 
year since the Reformation. These miracles range from in- 
spirations for sermons to the averting of disease and danger. 
Although those who discredit the accounts of what appear to 
be miraculous healings effected by the Christian Scientists 
under the teachings of Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy, and who 
especially revile her claim to have had a revelation of that 
science, assume to do so on the strength of a pretended dogma, 
I find them believing in and at least impliedly teaching "special 
providences." I find also that men eminent in their churches 
have declared that they, too, were especially inspired for 
especial and critical occasions; that they have witnessed or ex- 
perienced divine blessings in the form of rescue from death by 



RECAPITULATION. 



189 



freezing, by violence of enemies, by flood, by storm; in battle 
and in wreck; that men have been raised up or called to the 
work to fill especial missions; that disease has been healed, 
poverty alleviated; crime prevented and criminals converted. 
I find among the leaders of Protestant churches many who 
teach or have taught in more or less crude fashion the main 
ideas which Mrs. Eddy has reduced to a science. I find that of 
those who have most bitterly attacked Mrs. Eddy's system 
within the range of my knowledge all, or nearly all, continue 
to petition God for blessings after having denounced Mrs. Eddy 
for doing the same thing by a different method. 

I also find some very absurd discrepancies and inconsist- 
encies in the arguments of those who attack Christian Science. 
Among these is the veneration in which are held some of the 
eminent teachers of Methodism, Baptism, Congregationalism, 
Presbyterianism, etc., although nearly every man thus honored 
taught something essentially miraculous and to that extent, 
in harmony with Christian Science, though they all groped in 
the dark as to what they called "the means of grace." 

In contemplating this condition I find but one thing in- 
Mrs. Eddy's system with which they have any logical ground 
for quarreling. That is what a few are brave enough to 
acknowledge, viz: The reduction of divine healing to a 
science. This has been pronounced profanation by a few. Al- 
though not openly endorsed by the many, it seems the only 
ground on which they can defend their action. Even this is 
as absurd as the action of some communities of the "Amish" 
Menonites who have forbidden the use of windmills by their 
members because they deemed it profanation to reduce God's 



j g RECAPITULATION. 

winds to slavery by using machines that would make the ele- 
ments work for man. 

I find the hymnals of nearly all the churches and sects 
replete with evidence of either belief in miracles or poetic fic- 
tions that indicate such a belief, and I have rarely attended a 
religious meeting in which the prayers failed to ask for bless- 
ings, the granting of which would involve the working of 
miracles. 

While many saintly men in the churches have been able 
to relieve suffering mortals, none have ever been able to teach 
others how to do the same work or to invest them with the 
power as Jesus and His apostles did. Now when Mrs. Eddy 
has accomplished her work, her claims to have been inspired 
are met by denunciation and ridicule, as presumptuous, if not 
blasphemous, the healings effected through her and her pupils 
are declared frauds, impostures or delusions, though neither 
she nor her students pretend that their work is miraculous. 
They say it is in conformity with divinely natural law and that 
by observing that law man may defy disease as easily as all 
Christians say he may defy sin. 

This work is not authorized by Christian Scientists. No 
member of the Church of Christ has ever read a page of the 
manuscript or proof, nor has any of the church authorities, 
either local or in the headquarters in Boston, been consulted 
as to the expediency or propriety of publishing it. 



INDEX. 



Abbe, Paris 149 

Afraid of the word "miracles" 170 

Age of miracles 7, 139 

Aid to revivalists 40, 45 

Aiken's history of Presbyterianism 98 

Ambrose, St 16 

Anabaptists (see Baptists) 

Anglican miracles 13 

Argyll, Duke of 24 

Arnold, Matthew 77 

Asbury, Bishop Francis 39 

Augustine, St 11, 149 

Bampton lectures 9 

Baptism of the Holy Ghost 97 

Baptists' testimony 64 

Beecher, H. W. ...... .11, 175 

Beecher, Lyman 102 

Berdoe, Dr 135 

Bernard, St 79 

Bertram's encyclopaedia 11 

Blasphemer killed ^ 120 

Boehme's mysticism * 136 

Boss Tweed " 164 

Bowman, Bishop, healed 107 

Boyer s history of Vaudois 20 

Boy, wonder healer 123 

Bruce, Professor A. M. 76 

Burke, Edmund 80 

Bushnell, Rev. Horace 34 

Cal vanist authorities 17 

California miracles 121 

Camp meeting's, origin of 18 

Carlyle, Rev. Alex 22 

Cartwright, Rev. Peter 41 

Oatarrlr cured 107 

Caterpillar plague abated 48 



1 92 INDEX - 

Caughey, James, revivalist 56 

Cave on St. Ambrose , 16 

Cecil, Rev. Richard Ill 

Charles, Mrs. E 145 

Charlatan cures, etc 93 

Christian age 117 

Chrisilieb, Professor Theo. 87 

Christian Science 77, 85 

Clarke, Dr. E. H 90 

Cobbe, Francis Power 159 

College professors' views 71 

Communing with God 59 

Combinations of forces 103 

Congregation converted 54 

Conversion like Paul's 96 

Conclusion 185 

Cranmer on divine selections 13 

Credulity and incredulity 33 

Cumberland Presbyterians 18 

Curtis, Rev. Lucius 151 

Cyclone diverted 50 

Dabney, Professor R. L 140 

Davy, Sir Humphrey 162 

Dead raised 40 

Debt miraculously paid 177 

Deceit attributed to Jesus 78 

Degrees in miracles 153 

Deserting husbands converted 107, 114 

Dictation to Omnipotence 143 

Disbelief and results 7 

Dyspepsia healed 107 

Divine guidance 18, 39, 48, 60, 99 

Divine wrath 164 

Doubt of God's power 98 

Drunkard converted 53 

Duke of Argyll 24 

Duke of Savoy , 22 

Dwight, Professor Timothy 81 

Ears do not hear 92 

Eddy, Mrs. Mary B 139 



INDEX. jg. 

Edwards, "Sailor" 69 

Egede. Hans 89 

Elizabeth, Queen 13 

Episcopal church 13 

Escape from disease 46 

Evans', history of Shakers 140 

Evangelists' miracles •• . 38 

Evidence of miracles 137 

Eyes do not see 92 

Farrar, Canon . . . 15, 119 

Fasting for miracles 30, 54 

Fed miraculously 69 

Ferrier, Dr. David 92 

Ferriage provided for 142 

Finney, Professor C. G 18, 95 

Fisher, Professor George P 79 

Fiske, Professor John 86 

Fog in aid of Vaudois 21 

Fowler, Bishop C. H 49 

Fox, George 152 

French fleet destroyed , . 81 

Gairdner, James 142 

George, Bishop, healed 53 

Giles, Rev. Chauncy 45 

Oilly, William Stephen 16, 21 

God raises up men 18 

God guided Puritans 29 

God defeats a trickster 31 

God swept the strings 133 

Godet, F 74 

Greatrakes, Valentine 157 

Gregory. St 11, 148 

Gruber, Rev. Jacob 45 

Harris, Professor Samuel 80 

Harvard college 17 

Hatfield, Dr. E. F 108 

Hays' Presbyterian history 17 

Healing by prayer 44, 53, 65, 107, 116 

Healing by royal touch 85 



i 9 4 INDEX ' 

Hemphill, Rev. John . . . 181 

Henry VIII 14 

Hensoldt, Dr. Heinrich 141 

Hoheu shell, the healer 124 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell . 90 

Holbrook, Rev. J. C 174 

Holy coat of Treves 16 

Hopkins, Professor Mark 103 

Hospital walls prayed up 118 

Howitt, William 11 

Humboldt 162 

Hume . . 144, 163 

Huxley 10, 152, 163 

Hymns for miracles 128 

Illustration by miracle 112 

Indian mortality aids Puritans 32 

Infidel testimony 152 

Inskip, William 108 

Inspiration of preachers 18, 48, 99, 117 

Inspiration for paying cash 117 

Inspiration in general 138 

Jansenist miracles , 149, 163 

Jerks (religious contortions) 38, 42 

Jesting to deny fact 36 

Jones, Bishop 107 

Jones, Rev. Sam 47 

Judd, Carrie P 109 

Judgment on sinners 43 

Keach, Benjamin 67 

Kiffen, Rev. William 68 

Killed by imagination 124 

Xinnear, J. Boyd, on cure 143 

Knapp, Elder Jacob 40 

Xnollys, Rev. Hanserd 65 

Xostlin, Julius 74 

Krummacher, Rev. Dr. 118, 177 

-Labor divinely rewarded 100 

Lama, Grand, of Thibet 141 



INDEX. jqc 

Law ; "Reign of ,; 24 

Law above human ken 25 

Law of nature 27, 75 

Law, higher 77 

Law, combination of 50 

Law, William 136 

Lee, Mother Ann 140 

Lecky on doubt 10, 152 

Liefchild, Dr 119 

Life miraculously saved 50 

Life without brain 92 

Limiting Omnipotence 145, 158 

Liquified air 126 

Locke, on natural law 27 

Luther's belief 74, 116, 120 

Lutheran witness 150 

Macaulay on Cranmer 13 

McAdow's revelation 18 

McLeod, Rev. Donald Ill 

Maffitt, J. Newland 44 

Mahaffy, J. P 27 

Mallock on Huxley 10 

MaDfred, Jacob 155 

Marpingen miracles 152 

Marion, General Prances 155 

Marriage prevented 59 

Mark of Arethusa 165 

Marbden, Rev. Joshua 39 

Mather, Cotton and Increase 32 

Methodists and miracles 38 

Melancthon healed 89, 116 

Menno, Simon 64 

Mennonites (see Baptists) 

Middleton, Conyers, on disbelief 15 

Millman's history 164 

Minister converted 57 

Miracles, of healing 44, 53, 65, 107, 116 

Miracles, for illustration 112 

Miracles, denned 8, 169 

Miracles, Baptists .' 10 

Miracles, Methodists 38 to 61, 69> 



196 



INDEX. 



Miracles, miscellaneous 135 to 146 

Miracles and Providences 10 

Miracles, Tractarian 154 

Miracles, non-religious 121 

Miracles, workers expelled 14 

Miracles, in 1899 179 

Moody, Dwig-ht L 110, 179 

Moravian example 145 

Mormon miracle 167 

Mysterious circulation of news 126 

Mysticism — Boehme's 136 

Neumark, George 132 

Newman, Cardinal 12, 129 

Newspaper miracles 126 

News mysteriously circulated 126 

New Ulm massacre 164 

Oberlin college 100 

Paris, Abbe 149 

Popular Science Monthly 152 

Porter, Professor Noah , 81 

Prayer. Efficacy of 45, 49, 57, 67 

Prayer, Power of 67, 81, 103, 110 118 

Prayer, Gauge 140 

Prayer, For temporal concerns 118 

Prayer, Cure (orthodox) 56 

Precocious prophet 22 

Presbyterians quoted 17 to 27 

Postscript 187 

Princes divinely appointed 13 

Protestant repression 14 

Providences and miracles 10 

Providence guides an arrow 20 

Providential immigration 19 

Puritan miracles 28 to 33 

Quaker marvels 34, 152 

Rader, Rev. William 182 

Rain by prayer 30, 10£ 

Recapitulation 188; 



INDEX. jg- 

Reformation a miracle 17, 21 

Relics and miracles < 15, 153 

Rescue from robbers Ill 

Rescue from starvation Ill 

Rescue from pirates 112 

Results of disbelief 7, 35 

Revelations to men 18, 34, 41, 60, 64 

Robinson, Rev. Frederick 177 

Rockyzan, John 145 

Russian miracle workers 86 

San Francisco clergymen 179 

Saved for the church 51 

Saved from starvation 30, 130 

Saved from wreck 29, 32, 89 

Scientists rebuke skeptics 162 

Scoffer converted 52 

Scoffer killed 43 

Scotch believers 22 

Schu, Karl Gottlob 106 

Schwenkfeldians 14 

Simpson, Bishop, healed 107 

Shaker marvels 140 

Skeptic credulity 141, 148, 153 

Slander refuted - 34 

Smith, Jennie 109 

Smith, Rev. John , 142 

Soldier's life saved 119 

Specious orthodox reasoning 139 

Spirit perceived 94 

Spurgeon's views 70, 89, 114 

Stephens, Sir James 153 

Steffens, Heinrich 150 

Sunday school miracles 16 

Talmage, Rev. T. D , 164 

Taylor, Bishop William 107 

Tractarian miracles 154 

Traitor stricken dumb 65 

Trench, Archbishop 169 

Tyndall's views 10, 140 



198 



INDEX. 



Union Theological Seminary 74, 77 

Unseen world . , 86 

Unwelcome preacher 53 

Usher, Archbishop 113 

Vaudois 20 

Visions, marvelous 90 

Vision of Professor Finney 97 

War miracles 80 

Warburton, Bishop 144 

Ware, Dr., of Boston 93 

Wace, Bishop, on Huxley 10 

Waldenses (see Vaudois) ' 

Wallace, Alfred R , 162 

Watson, Dr, James V 52 

Wesley 39, 119 

Weather affected by prayer 49 

Wilson, Rev. J. A. B 181 

Witchcraft 32 

Wonders of science 25 

Williams, Roger 70 

White, Andrew D 83 

White discredits himself 84 

Why do they pray 183 

Why they are incensed 172 

Wreck averted 89 

Yale professors' views . . 79 



JIJl 31 1899 



p 



